Concerts to celebrate Ursuline Convent's 125th anniversary

September 11, 2007

Tomorrow (the 12th of September) will be the 125th anniversary of the arrival of the Ursuline Community in Armidale. To help celebrate the anniversary, musical works by Ursuline Sisters from the seventeenth century will be performed in Armidale's Ursuline Convent Chapel on the 14th and 15th of September.

Dr Andrew Alter, a Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of New England, will direct the well-known Armidale choral group Fiori Musicali in the Australian premiere of a Mass written by the seventeenth-century composer Isabella Leonarda, and the soprano Samantha Cobcroft will sing a number of works by Leonarda and her fellow composer Maria Peruchona. Dr Peter Maddox will lead the instrumental group that will accompany the singers. The concerts on both evenings will begin at 7.30 pm.

"The Ursuline Convent anniversary provides the perfect opportunity to perform these rare works in the wonderful acoustic environment of the Ursuline Chapel," Dr Alter said.

"Over the years, the University's Music Department and Fiori Musicali have held numerous concerts in the Chapel," he added. "The anniversary, therefore, is also an opportunity for us to celebrate that relationship."

"Isabella Leonarda lived in northern Italy at the end of the seventeenth century," Dr Alter explained. "Her music, as well as that of other women composers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, has recently been rediscovered and published by scholars in the United States – most notably Barbara Jackson.

"Leonarda and Maria Peruchona lived near each other and belonged to popular religious organisations of the time known as 'Collegio di Sant'Orsola'. These groups were dedicated to St Ursula and consequently later became known as 'the Ursulines'. So the works being performed at this week's anniversary concerts hold a special connection to the Ursuline Convent in Armidale."

The Ursuline Sisters arrived in Armidale in September 1882. The Ursuline Chapel was completed in 1930 and has been an Armidale landmark ever since.

Although the Chapel was designed and built for liturgical worship, in recent times it has also been sought as a venue for performances of classical and contemporary religious music. "Both instrumental and vocal artists have appreciated the Chapel's unique acoustic quality, the intimate space, and the religious setting," Dr Alter said.

Tickets for the concerts can be obtained from Sister Cath Duxbury on (02) 6772 3631 (e-mail: c.duxbury@arm.catholic.edu.au).

Posted by Jim Scanlan at September 11, 2007 02:58 PM