NM Symphonic Chorus to perform inaugural Roger Melone concert

The New Mexico Symphonic Chorus will perform its inaugural Roger Melone Emeritus Event on Sunday, Oct. 15, in the Simms Auditorium at Albuquerque Academy.

The concert will salute Melone’s 50+ years in New Mexico choral music. The former NMSC director retired last spring.

The concert will feature tenor Jamie Flora and baritone Edmund Connolly as soloists on Giuseppe Verdi’s “Pater Noster” followed by Giacomo Puccini’s “Messa di Gloria,” a Mass composed for orchestra and four-part choir with tenor and baritone soloists.

Verdi’s select output of choral music is little known, but contains much of the dramatic boldness and harmonic invention of his operatic choruses. The “Pater Noster” is an unusual work of moderate difficulty, ranging in mood from meditative, devotional stillness to dramatic contrasts of a more extrovert nature.

Puccini composed the Mass as his graduation exercise from the L’Istituto Musicale Pacini. It was first performed in 1880.

The concert will feature conductor John Lidfors, one of three candidates for the position of music director.

Lidfors studied conducting at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and at the Berlin University of the Arts. He also studied at the conducting academies of Aspen and Gstaad, as well as at the Riccardo Muti Italian Opera Academy. A prize winner in the Arthur Nikisch International Conducting Competition, finalist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Sir Georg Solti International Conducting Competition and winner of the 2021 German Choral Conductor’s Prize, he has debuted at the Berlin Philharmonie and the Vienna Musikverein concert halls.

Lidfors is passionate about performing choral-orchestral masterpieces such as Joseph Haydn’s “Creation,” George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah,” and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Requiem.” As a fellow of the Conducting Forum of the German Music Council, he has worked with the RIAS Chamber Choir, MDR Leipzig Radio Choir, WDR Radio Choir Cologne and the Gaechinger Cantorey of the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart. Additionally, he has performed with the Berlin Radio Choir, ChorWerk Ruhr, the Philharmonic Choir of Berlin and the Oregon Bach Festival Chorus.