Serenade to Music

Great River Chorale welcomes jazz pianist and Saint Cloud, Minnesota, native Laura (Van Nostrand) Caviani and The Laura Caviani Trio for a collaborative concert featuring choral and jazz music inspired by the sonnets and plays of William Shakespeare. Great River Chorale will perform Ralph Vaughan Williams’ beautiful Serenade to Music with pianist Barbara Brooks and violinist Jennifer Wildeson, and Songs and Sonnets from Shakespeare by American jazz artist and composer George Shearing with pianist Brooks and bassist Chris Bates. The Laura Caviani Trio will premiere two new sets of instrumental jazz pieces inspired by Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and composed expressly for this concert by Caviani. The concert concludes with the two groups combining to perform the world premiere of Caviani’s piece for choir and jazz trio, Trip Away, also with lyrics from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and commissioned by Great River Chorale for its fifteenth anniversary season.