The Joyful Mysteries
Saturday, October 7, 7:30pm
South Main Baptist Church
4100 Main Street, 77002
$45 general admission
$10 student tickets
About
Kinetic joins Houston Chamber Choir and The Monarch Chamber Players for the world premiere of Daniel Knaggs's new major work, The Joyful Mysteries, a choral symphony for choir, chamber orchestra, and soloists. Commissioned by Holy Rosary Church (Houston), the work explores five mysteries of joy, which come to be even in the context of fear, sorrow, and suffering. A trio of illustrious soloists include Gemma Summerfield, soprano, Sarah Mesko, mezzo-soprano, and Federico de Michelis, bass-baritone. To open the program, Kinetic partners again with The Monarch Chamber Players in Jacques Ibert’s virtuosic Capriccio of 1938.
— curated by Mary Grace Johnson, violinist
Program
Jacques Ibert: Capriccio (1938)
with Monarch Chamber Players
Daniel Knaggs: The Joyful Mysteries (2023 — Premiere)
Gemma Summerfield, soprano
Sarah Mesko, mezzo-soprano
Federico de Michelis, bass-baritone
Houston Chamber Choir
Monarch Chamber Players
Robert Simpson, conductor
Featured Composer
In 2022 alone, Daniel Knaggs’s music was performed in Singapore, Australia, Latvia, Poland, Estonia, Italy, England, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Portugal, the Czech Republic, and throughout the USA. After living in Mexico, Nicaragua, and France, and having studied six foreign languages, he continues to explore the interplay between music and linguistics while maintaining an international outlook in his work.
Increasingly sought after as a composer, Knaggs has recently been commissioned by the 2023 Puccini Chamber Opera Festival, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, the Choir of Trinity College Cambridge, Voces8, Wells Cathedral Choir, Choir & Organ Magazine/The Choir of Royal Holloway, and the Yale Norfolk Summer Choral Festival.
Alongside his compositional projects, Knaggs’s conducting schedule has recently taken him to Bulgaria, to conduct the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra in the premiere of his new work The Fire Within, to Italy, to conduct the premiere of his new chamber opera Zita di Lucca at the 2023 Puccini Chamber Opera Festival in Lucca, and to Poland, to conduct the Polish premiere of his major work Dwa Zdroje (Two Streams) at the Musica Vera Festival in Torun. He is now Artistic Director of the new Poland-based professional choir, Ensemble Invocatio, which he founded in 2022.
Knaggs completed his doctorate in music composition (2017) at the Shepherd School of Music (Rice University) and graduated in 2007 from the University of Michigan with bachelor’s degrees in voice performance and Spanish.