This Kansas City concert promises ’the most sublime and spectacular music’

Kansas City will get a taste of 16th century Venetian splendor, when Te Deum, led by Matthew Christopher Shepard, presents Monteverdi’s Venetian Vespers of 1641 on June 3 at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church and June 4 at Village Presbyterian Church. Te Deum will be joined by the Kansas City Baroque Consortium conducted by Trilla Ray-Carter.

Monteverdi’s music is rarely if ever heard live in Kansas City, so this is a rare opportunity to hear music by this important composer. The concert will conclude Te Deum’s 15th anniversary season, and it’s a great example of what the group does so well, performing rare gems of the choral repertoire.

Monteverdi is best known for his Marian Vespers of 1610. For this performance, Shepard has constructed a different vespers service, using hymns and Psalm settings from Monteverdi’s collection of sacred music, “Selva Morale e Spirituale.”

“At the very end of his career, Monteverdi published what were the quintessential highlights of his 30-year career as ‘maestro di cappella’ at St. Mark’s in Venice,” Shepard said. “That publication is the ‘Selva Morale e Spirituale.’ What I’ve done is taken the appropriate Psalms, the ‘Magnificat’ and hymns from the ‘Selva Morale’ and reconstructed a vesper service that likely would have been performed the way Monteverdi would have performed it.”

Shepard says that in 1620, Constantijn Huygens was traveling to Venice with some government officials from the Netherlands, and he wrote in his journal about going to a vesper service for the feast of St. John the Baptist.

“It was Monteverdi’s music led by Monteverdi, and Huygens wrote that it was the most sublime and spectacular music he’d ever heard,” Shepard said. “Now these are Calvinists, so I can’t even imagine how amazed and awestruck they would have been by hearing, as he writes, ‘four theorbos, and an upright bass bigger than I’ve ever seen, 14 singers and a group of trombones and cornetti.’”

Monteverdi straddled the Renaissance and Baroque, and his music is often seen as a transition between the two eras. Shepard says that in earlier music, like Monteverdi’s, the conductor is given much more freedom in shaping the music, such as choosing what instruments are used.

“That’s one of the fun and challenging things about Monteverdi is that it’s way less prescribed,” Shepard said. “It’s early baroque, and there are so many decisions left to the conductor and performers as to what to do. We are not adding a trombone choir. We’re keeping it simpler. We’re going to have two violins, a cello, and the rest of our continuo is going to be an organ, a theorbo and a baroque harp.”

The superb Elisa Bickers will be the organist, and Donald Livingston the harpist.

“He’s the new director of music at Grace Cathedral in Topeka,” Shepard said. “Donald is an organist, as well as a harpsichordist and baroque harpist. We’re bringing in the theorbist from Chicago.”

A theorbo, also called a chitarrone, is essentially a lute but a lute that has a really large extension.

“It has these bass strings on it, so it’s taller than a person,” Shepard said. “It plays the bass line, but fills out the harmony with the rest of its strings. It’s difficult to find a theorbo player here in the middle of the country. We’re bringing one in from Chicago. So they’re around. But there’s not a lot.”

For this performance, Te Deum will have 26 singers. Six members of Kansas City Baroque Consortium will play authentic period instruments.

“I think Monteverdi is childlike in his hyper-expression of the feeling of the moment,” Shepard said. “He doesn’t care about the forest nearly as much as he does about every tree and every word being expressed as fully as it can. His music is unbridled. It’s not necessarily packaged in a beautiful box. I think new listeners will find it wildly exciting.”

7:30 p.m. June 3 at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, 1307 Holmes St., and 3 p.m. June 4 at Village Presbyterian Church, 6641 Mission Road, Prairie Village. $20-$25. te-deum.org.

Kansas City Symphony: Stern conducts Mahler and Montgomery

The Kansas City Symphony has a big concert coming up June 2 to 4 at Helzberg Hall. Michael Stern, who hasn’t conducted much this season, will be on the podium to lead the orchestra in music by Delius, Mahler and Jessie Montgomery.

The concert will open with “The Walk to the Paradise Garden” by Delius, a beautiful piece of English Impressionism. Then it’s “Five Freedom Songs,” a work the symphony co-commissioned from Montgomery, an up-and-coming composer who’s receiving a lot of buzz. She is currently composer-in-residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

The main work on the program is Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, a wide-eyed lyrical work that portrays a child-like vision of paradise. Soprano Julia Bullock will be featured in both the Montgomery and the Mahler.

8 p.m. June 2 and 3 and 2 p.m. June 4. $25-$95. 816-471-0400 or kcsymphony.org.

Kansas City Symphony: Celebration at the Station

“Celebration at the Station,” the Kansas City Symphony’s annual blowout marking the beginning of summer, will return May 28 at Union Station. The patriotic program will include works by John Williams, Aaron Copland and John Philip Sousa, as well as Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” accompanied by live cannons. Pre-concert entertainment will begin at 5 p.m., and food trucks will offer an assortment of festive foods.

8 p.m. May 28. Union Station, 30 W. Pershing Road. Free. kcsymphony.org.

You can reach Patrick Neas at patrickneas@kcartsbeat.com and follow his Facebook page, KC Arts Beat, at www.facebook.com/kcartsbeat.