Celebratory Concert
Honors Robert Porco
 | Cincinnati Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls presents Key to the City to Robert Porco, May Festival Director of Choruses. |
5/21/2010 - Cincinnati Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls presented the Key to the City to Robert Porco, Director of Choruses for the Cincinnati May Festival, this evening at a Celebratory Concert in his honor at Music Hall.
Today, May Festival is honoring Mr. Porco, who has devoted himself to the May Festival Chorus for 20 years, shaping this diverse group of dedicated and talented singers into the remarkable ensemble it is today. After Ms. Qualls’ presentation, the concert commenced with the world premiere of Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, a work composed by American composer, Ian Krouse, who is in Cincinnati this weekend for the event. Drawing its inspiration from passages in Walt Whitman’s poem cycle, Sea Drift, the work was commissioned for the occasion by current and former members of the May Festival Chorus in honor of Mr. Porco’s 20th year as Director of Choruses. (Read composer’s notes.)
Mr. Porco has provided the artistic choral leadership for more May Festivals than any other Chorus Director in the history of the Festival. The 140-voice volunteer Festival chorus is comprised by volunteer singers from throughout the Greater Cincinnati tri-state region. Now in its 137th year, the Cincinnati May Festival is the oldest continuous choral festival in the Western Hemisphere and is the seminal music organization from which Cincinnati’s rich musical legacy evolved and blossomed.
Tonight’s performance also featured two of Robert Porco’s favorite works from the choral repertoire, Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and William Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast. As part of the celebration, over 50 members of the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus (where Mr. Porco is also Director of Choruses) joined the May Festival Chorus onstage for the Walton performance. A gala event entitled A Fabulous Feast followed in the ballroom of The Phoenix in downtown Cincinnati.
Born in Steubenville, Ohio, a graduate of Ohio State University, and now residing in Cleveland as Director of Choruses for the Cleveland Orchestra, Mr. Porco is also a visiting professor on the choral conducting faculty at Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington. (Read Robert Porco’s bio.)
