This year’s vocal music festival encompasses 17 concerts.
By HELEN KAYE
The regulars already know, so tickets for this always-gorgeous Abu Ghosh Vocal Music Festival over Shavuot at the Kiryat Ye’arim church and in the crypt of the crusader chapel down below are fast disappearing. If this is your first time – hurry! This year’s festival, from May 18 to 22, encompasses 17 concerts, 11 in the church, 6 in the crypt, and as usual, lots of stuff on the church grounds, including a boutique winery fair – yes, you get to taste.The big excitement this year is the Utah University Choir. Tickets to their first two concerts are sold out but there’ll be a third concert on Saturday, May 22 at 11:30 am in the church. The program will be a blend of Bach, Brahms, spirituals, Mahler, and Rachmaninov’s incomparable Vespers.Other intriguing programs in the church include the oratorio Canto General by Mikis Theordorakis set to a text by Pablo Neruda (18/5 – 11:30 a.m.), Magical Voices from Serbia and Bulgaria (21/5 – 11:30 a.m.), some lovely stuff by Vivaldi, Marcello and Handel (22/5 – 3 p.m.), and Mozart’s soaring Great Mass in C Minor (22/5 – 6:30 p.m.). The crypt is more intimate, so there we have programs like countertenorDavid Feldman singing Brahms, Schubert and Bruckner (21/5 – 4:15 p.m.)or Amazing Grace, a concert of prayers set to music such as “Ave Maria”and the Beatles “Let It Be” (22/5 – 4:15).Thursday May 20 you can pay NIS 45, spend 2 hours from 5 to 7 p.m.,rehearsing chorales and canons, then sing them in the church along withthe Megiddo Choir. If you just want to listen to the concert at 6:30p.m., you can do that too.The outside vocal or instrumental groups are free to those purchasingtickets to the main events. If you just want to listen outside, kidspay NIS 30, adults NIS 75. Tickets to the church are NIS 120-130 andNIS 90 for the crypt. Check put the program at www.agfestival.co.il.