Contralto Beverly Benso is a uniquely gifted singer in her range.

Prior to her 1990 debut at Carnegie Hall, Ms. Benso had already established an international reputation through her performances in the Bach Tricentennial in Leipzig, the 1989

Salzburg and Rheingau Festivals, and the 1986 Mahler Festival in Canada.

Tenor Samuel Gordon is professor of music at the University of Akron, Ohio. He is an award-winning conductor and

composer as well as a singer. A number of Dr. Gordon’s original

compositions and arrangements of American spirituals are in

the quartet’s standing repertoire.

Baritone Robert Kennedy is also much in demand as a soloist, both as a recitalist and for his interpretations of opera and

oratorio roles. He has been heard as Colas in the National

Gallery’s concert production of Mozart’s Bastien und Bastienne,

which was presented in the context of the 1991 Washington

Mozart Festival, and more recently in the role of Herr

Schlendrian in Bach’s Coffee Cantata.

Pianist Francis Gonlon is one of the most sought-after ensemble musicians in the greater Washington area, and he is on

stage virtually every week of the year. His numerous concert

tours have included Canada, Mexico, Europe, and Japan. He

has been a winner of the National Society ofArts and Letters

Competition and the Jordan Awards Contest here in Washington, as well as the Brewster-Allison Competition in Austin,

Texas. A member of the music faculty at George Washington

University, Conlon is the director of music at the Church of

the Annunciation in Washington and Temple Rodef Shalom in

Falls Church, Virginia.

National Gallery music director George Manos founded the

National Gallery Vocal Arts Ensemble in the First year of his

tenure, recognizing the potential and appropriateness ofsuch

a resident ensemble as part of the Gallery’s offering to the

public. Since then, he has also founded the National Gallery

Chamber Players String Quartet and the National Gallery

Chamber Players Wind Quintet. In addition to artistic direction of these groups and direction of the National Gallery Orchestra, Manos has introduced innovations to the Gallery’s

American Music Festival in the form of jazz, bluegrass, and

gospel concerts.

The Fifty-seventh Season of

THE WILLIAM NELSON CROMWELL and

E LAMMOT BELIN CONCERTS

National Gallery of Art

2295th Concert

NATIONAL GALLERY VOCAL ARTS ENSEMBLE

ROSA LAMOREAUX, soprano

BEVERLY BENSO, contralto

SAMUEL GORDON, tenor

ROBERT KENNEDY, baritone

FRANCIS CONLON, pianist

GEORGE MANOS, artistic director

Sunday Evening, January 24, 1999

Seven O’clock

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
PROGRAM

1.

Francis Pilkington Four Madrigals

(1562-1638)

Now Let Her Change

Rest, Sweet Nymphs

Climb, O Heart

The Messenger of the Delightful Spring

John Eccles 

(c. 1668-1735)

2.

Ah, How Lovely

(Tenor and soprano)

John Blow

(1649-1708)

Ah, Heaven, What Is’t I Hear

(Soprano and contralto)

If I My Celia 

(Tenor and baritone)

3.

Morton Lauridsen Mid-winter Songs

(b.1945) (1980)

Mid-winter Waking

She Tells Her Love

Intercession in Late October

Like Snow

INTERMISSION

Gabriel Faure

(1845-1924)

Camille Saint-Saens

(1835-1921)

Francis Poulenc 

(1899-1963)

Pavane

Pleurs d’or

(Contralto and baritone)

Puisque ici-bas tout ame 

(Soprano and tenor)

Ah! Mon beau laboureur

Belle et ressemblante

Margoton va t’a l’iau

Faure Madrigal

Allen Trubitt Three Songs on the Shortness of Life

(b.1931)

Injurious Hours 

Life Is a Poet’s Fable

Our Hasty Life

5.

6.

(Arr. Phil Mattson) Londonderry Air

(Arr. Andre Ellefeuille) The Last Rose of Summer

(Arr. Margaret Vance) What Love Can Do

(Arr. Maurice Gardner) Every Night, When the Sun Goes Down

(Arr. David Diising) Frog Went a’Courtin’

The National Gallery Vocal Arts Ensemble was founded

in 1986 as a resident ensemble of the National Gallery ofArt by

the Gallery’s music director, George Manos. Since then the ensemble has appeared at the National Gallery twenty-one times

and presented numerous concerts in other venues, including the

Louvre Museum in Paris, Germany’s Rheingau Festival, and the

1989 Salzburg Festival. From each of its six concert tours of Europe the ensemble has brought home rave reviews, as well as

first prize from the 1988 “Music at Saint Donat’s” Festival in

the formerYugoslavia. The ensemble has presented vocal music

as an enhancement to a number of exhibitions at the Gallery,

including The Glory of Venice: Art in the Eighteenth Century and The

Touch ofthe Artist: Master Drawingsfrom the Woodner Collections.

The quartet’s soprano, Rosa Lamoreaux, is well known to

Washington audiences through her many appearances at the

Smithsonian Concert Series, the Kennedy Center, the Folger

Shakespeare Library, and the National Gallery. In November of 

1998, she was the soprano soloist for the world premiere performance at the Library ofCongress of Herman Berlinski’s cantata,

MaskirNeshamoth (In Remembrance ofa Soul).