Organ and Choral Masterworks: Duruflé Requiem, Featuring Tabernacle Organist Andrew Unsworth
Event Schedule
Date: March 14, 2025
Day: Friday
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: No tickets needed; free admission
Parking: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/feature/templesquare/directions-and-parking/temple-square-events?lang=eng
Location: Tabernacle
About the event
Maurice Duruflé’s exacting, meticulous compositional style led to his publishing relatively few works in his lifetime. His beautiful Requiem is his most famous. This nine-movement work is largely based on Gregorian chant and the Gregorian Mass for the Dead, with characteristics of lyricism, free-flowing meter, and serenity expressing not only grief for earthly sorrows about death and dying but also faith in the soul’s flight to paradise. Along with Duruflé’s masterful Requiem, we will present other powerful, hopeful, and sacred works featuring choir and organ by Holst, Chilcott, Murphy, and Dyson. We are pleased to feature Tabernacle organist Andrew Unsworth on our program.
Wasatch Chorale
Celebrating its 50th anniversary season, the Wasatch Chorale is a chamber choir that offers outstanding choral performances to Utah County. Originating in 1974, the choir was first known as the Civic Oratorio Society and, in 1980, became the Utah Valley Choral Society. In 1999, the board of trustees approved a shorter name for the choir: the Wasatch Chorale. The choir has a rich history of collaboration with various arts organizations, including the Utah Valley Symphony, Utah Premiere Brass, Utah Lyric Opera, Timpanogos Symphony Orchestra, and numerous ensembles and professional musicians across the Wasatch Front. Wasatch Chorale’s mission is to cultivate a vibrant community where diverse musicians inspire each other, develop their talents, and create transcendent musical experiences.
Alison Unsworth, artistic director
Alison Unsworth has been involved in choral music her whole life. She earned her bachelor’s degree in choral education from Brigham Young University and her master’s degree in choral conducting from Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. She has taught music in elementary, middle, and high schools and has directed community adult and children’s choirs. Alison is an active choral singer, having sung with the Durham Civic Choral Society, the Vocal Arts Ensemble, the Duke University Collegium Musicum, the Utah Chamber Artists, the Salt Lake Vocal Artists, and the Choir of the Cathedral of the Madeleine. She and her husband, Andrew, have five children.
CJ Madsen, assistant director
Christopher Jed “CJ” Madsen is a third-year candidate for a doctor of musical arts degree, with an emphasis in choral conducting, at the University of Arizona. CJ recently earned his master’s degree in choral conducting and his bachelor’s degree in piano performance from Brigham Young University.
As a composer and arranger, CJ has had his works performed by all the auditioned BYU choirs. His most recent large work is an opera entitled He Shall Prepare a Way. In addition, CJ composed One Fold, One Shepherd, a sacred work for choir and orchestra. Much of CJ’s inspiration as a conductor, composer, and pianist comes from his belief in Christ; his passion for people; his thirst for powerful music; and his love for his wife, Samm, and his four children.
Andrew E. Unsworth, Salt Lake Tabernacle organist
Andrew E. Unsworth is one of three full-time organists at the Salt Lake Tabernacle at Temple Square, where he participates in the daily recital series on the 206-rank Æolian-Skinner organ and accompanies the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square on their weekly radio and television broadcast, Music and the Spoken Word. Prior to this appointment, he served as an assistant professor of music at Stephen F. Austin State University, in Nacogdoches, Texas, and as organist and assistant director of music at the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City. Dr. Unsworth earned his bachelor of music degree from Brigham Young University in organ performance and pedagogy and his master of arts and doctoral degrees in historical performance practice at Duke University. He has performed throughout the United States and Europe as a soloist and accompanist and as a recitalist at national and regional conventions of the Organ Historical Society and American Guild of Organists.
Paul Joseph Kohler, piano and organ accompanist
Paul Joseph Kohler began his musical journey at the age of twelve, demonstrating a precocious talent for piano, organ, and composition. His formative experiences instilled in him a deep appreciation for the rich history of keyboard performance and a rigorous approach to piano technique. In 2010, he earned his bachelor’s degree in music from Utah Valley University. At the University of Arizona, he completed his master of music degree in piano. His graduate studies provided opportunities for advanced exploration of the piano repertoire, performance practice, and musicological research. Paul currently serves as a staff pianist for the theater and dance departments at Utah Valley University and plays for the Wasatch Chorale, instrumentalists, and singers in the Utah Valley area.
Program
“Let All the World in Every Corner Sing,” Ryan Murphy
Paul Kohler, accompanist
Magnificat in D, George Dyson
Two settings of a sacred text:
“God So Loved the World,” Bob Chilcott
“God Loved Us, So He Sent His Son,” arr. Andrew Unsworth
“Psalm 148,” Gustav Holst
Requiem, Maurice Duruflé
Introit (Requiem aeternam): molto largo
Kyrie
Offertory (Domine Jesu Christe): Adagio molto
Sanctus: Andante moderato
Pie Jesu: Adagio
Agnus Dei: Andante
Communion (Lux aeterna)
Libera me: Moderato
In Paradisum: Andante moderato