Recital Celebrating Black History Month

Starts: Sunday, February 26th 2012 at 2:00 pm
Ends: Sunday, February 26th 2012 at 4:00 pm

Tenor Frederick Peterbark and soprano Abigail Chapman will give a joint recital to celebrate Black History Month on Sunday, February 26th. This program will include arrangements of traditional spirituals, gospel favorites, and art songs by such well-known African-American composers and arrangers as Uzee Brown Jr., Harry T. Burliegh, Hale Smith, and Leslie Adams.

A free-will donation will be collected in lieu of tickets.

Tenor Fred Peterbark

Frederick A. Peterbark is a native of Springfield, Virginia, and currently resides in Boulder, Colorado. He holds a Master’s of Music degree in Vocal Performance from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a Bachelor’s of Music degree in Vocal Performance from the University of Michigan, along with a Teacher’s Certificate for grades K-12.

Fred is the co-founder and director of the West Springfield Alumni Choir and Friends.  The choir has been honored to perform annually since 2005 at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, DC and the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.  Additionally, the choir accepted performance invitations at The Pentagon and the 2009 Illinois State Society’s Inaugural Ball.

In 2009, Fred created Peterbark Productions to facilitate the reproductions of A Tribute to Black Pioneers in Music Performance, which premiered at Macky Auditorium in February 2008.  The concert was reproduced at the University of Denver in 2009, and is now scheduled to be performed in Orangeburg, South Carolina this April.

Fred currently serves as Assistant to the Dean for Recruitment and Outreach at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s College of Music.

Fred is passionate about his heritage and his music.  When it comes to performing spirituals and gospel music, he believes the late composer, Moses Hogan said it best – “No matter what, God’s got our back.”

Soprano Abbi Chapman

A native of mid-coast Maine, Abigail (Abbi) Chapman is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College in New York, and a winner of the Sarah Lawrence Concerto Competition.  Abbi lived and sang in New York City from 2001 until her move to Denver in 2007; she has also performed elsewhere in the United States and overseas.  She is a regular soloist and staff singer at Saint John’s Cathedral in Denver. So far this season, her busy musical schedule has included giving a recital with Frederick Peterbark as part of the Weekend of Remembrance, Healing, and Wholeness at First United Methodist Church on the 10th anniversary of 9/11; singing the role of the shepherdess in John Blow’s opera Venus and Adonis with the Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado; singing Brahms’ Liebeslieder Walzer with a quartet from St. Martin’s Chamber Choir in their October Cameo Concerts; reprising the soprano solos in Handel’s Messiah with Saint John’s Cathedral Choir; singing works by Hildegard von Bingen with mezzo Marjorie Bunday, soprano Evanne Browne, and ‘cellist Margot Krimmel for FUMC’s celebration of its labyrinth and dedication of its weeping wall; and appearing as a soloist with Seicento Baroque Ensemble in Heinrich Biber’s Requiem in F minor and Heinrich Schütz’s Musikalische Exequien earlier this month.