Choir

Establishment and concerts abroad

The main university Choir was established for the performance of Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana” in February 2003, by the former university’s director of musical activities, Dr. Susanne Glaess. It has between 70 and 90 members: students and employees of the University, former students and former employees of the University, and friends that have joined over time. Since its establishment it has undertaken concert tours to Apulia (South Italy), Gdansk, Namibia, Istanbul, the Ukraine, China and England.

Repertoire

The repertoire includes numerous works for choir and orchestra, which have usually been performed at the end of the winter semester together with the University of Bremen Orchestra. This repertoire begins with works from the 19^th century: Brahms’ Requiem, Fauré’s Requiem, Max Bruch's "Ulysses", Bruckner’s Te Deum and Coleridge-Taylor’s “The Song of Hiawatha“. A particular point of focus are the 1920s and 1930s with performances of Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana", Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater, Weill’s “Der Weg der Verheißung“ and Tippett’s “A Child of Our Time“. The repertoire also includes more recent works such as the “QueenKlassical“ by the Band MerQury, Paul McCartneys “Liverpool Oratorio“, Philip Glass‘“Itaipu", Richard Einhorn’s “The Origin“, Johnny Parry's "An Anthology of All Things",  „Not the Messiah. He’s a very naughty boy! A comic oratorio inspired by Monty Python’s Life of Brian“, composed by Eric Idle and John Du Prez, and Arturo Márquez' "Sueños".

While the winter semester sees the choir performing works together with the orchestra, the summer program usually features songs for choir a cappella or with piano accompaniment. Here the repertoire spans from J. S. Bach’s motet “Jesu, meine Freude“, over Brahms' “Zigeunerlieder”, Tippett’s Spirituals and Spoliansky’s cabaret-opera “Rufen Sie Herrn Plim“ to contemporary compositions by Astor Piazzolla, Hasan Uçarsu, Meredith Monk, Murray Schafer, Gabriele Hasler and Juan María Solare.

International Songs & CD

The Choir boasts a two hour-long repertoire of international songs from Namibia, Turkey, the Ukraine, China and Germany that has been learned in conjunction with the concert tours. This repertoire has by now been performed in more than 70 concerts and is also available on CD. For details see the section of the website entitled Choir-CD. The university magazine “Impulse” (2012/1 edition) contains a detailed report on the international cooperations of the Choir which can be downloaded as a PDF (in German only).