I’m so proud to be singing the Mozart Requiem with fellow faculty, students, residents and staff of Weill Cornell Medical College, New York Presbyterian Hospital, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Rockefeller University and Hospital for Special Surgery in our first collaborative choral concert. We’ll be performing under the direction of David Leibowitz, and will be joined by solists and several instrumentalists from the Julliard School.
It’s all part of Cornell’s Music & Medicine Initiative, a program that encourages medical students to continue their ongoing relationship with music by providing rehearsal space, performance venues and opportunities to collaborate with NYC’s many arts organizations. Concert proceeds will benefit the Weill-Cornell student-run free clinic for the uninsured of New York City.
The concert will be held next Sunday, October 7 at 6:30 pm at St Bart’s Church on Park Ave in NYC. There will be a pre-concert lecture on Sunday at 5:30 pm at St Bart’s and on Thursday,October 4, at 5:30 pm, a free symposium at the Medical College on Music, Medicine and Mozart. (Concert and lecture details here)
The Requiem is one of the most beautiful and enigmatic works ever composed by Mozart, who was composing the Requiem at the time of his death and left it unfinished. The circumstances surrounding Mozart’s death, the writing of the Requiem and its ultimate completion have been the subject of centuries of scholarly debate and speculation, making it a most appropriate choice for this unique choral collaboration.
We had our first rehearsal with the orchestra yesterday, and from how it sounded I can say tell you it’s going to be a fabulous concert. If you’re free next Sunday evening, do come !
I LOVE this! If only I was on the same coast… But it is really great to blend music and history, to do something beautiful with good people you know from work, outside the workplace.