Laurens Collegium & Festival Choir The Big Sing

Laurens Collegium & Festival Choir The Big Sing:
Heavenly Sounds of Paris

The Laurens Collegium from Rotterdam is one of the recent success stories in the Dutch choral world. This young chamber choir is part of the Laurens Choraal, an umbrella organization for no less than three choirs, all led and conducted by Wiecher Mandemaker. This includes the mighty 80-voice symphonic choir Rotterdam Symphony Chorus. Like ROSCHO, which is about to embark on its third production with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Laurens Collegium appears more and more frequently with leading orchestras and ensembles in the Netherlands and gives concerts all over the country as well as its home city. For The Big Sing the Laurens Collegium performs a rich and diverse French programme spanning a century of music connected to three giants from the Parisian choral tradition. This repertoire is perfect for the glorious acoustics of the Saint Bavo Church – the thundering power of Vierne’s epic Messe Solonelle with its magisterial writing for organ; the fragile, incandescent beauty of Poulenc and Messaien so conducive to reflection.

A special feature of the Vierne performance: Festival Choir The Big Sing will perform alongside the Laurens Colegium in this concert. Master organist Hayo Boerema (resident organist at the Laurens Church, Rotterdam) will also perform solo organ pieces on the impressive eighteenth-century Müller organ. . . . .

Hayo Boerema – organ
Wiecher Mandemaker – conductor
The Big Sing Festival Choir

Program
Louis Vierne – Messe Solennelle
Francis Poulenc – Salve Regina
Olivier Messiaen – O Sacrum Convivium