APRIL FOOLS - MUSIC AND HUMOR: A CONCERT BY THE METROPOLITAN CHORALE

Clever, witty, and satirical, this concert promises to entertain. PDQ Bach, Tom Lehrer, and Jaakko Mäntyjärvi top the charts of music that ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous.

You'll chuckle at an ode to your favorite kitchen spices, chortle at an extensive national weather report, and crack up at a 90s pop favorite reimagined for 1500's royalty! Be prepared for surprises...

Directed by Lisa Graham, and hosted by Jeremiah Kissel

Lisa Graham is in her twenty-second season as Music Director of the Metropolitan Chorale. Dr. Graham has shaped the Chorale’s programming to include contemporary, American,and lesser known works, alongside the masterworks of the repertory. She has enhanced the reputation and reach of the Chorale through collaborations with acclaimed vocalists and instrumentalists, as well established composers of our day.

In a review of her appearance conducting the Metropolitan Chorale and the Boston Pops, Broadway World praised Dr. Graham as “a spellbinding maestro, balletic in her direction … a great connection with her performers on stage.”

In addition to her role as Music Director for the Metropolitan Chorale, Dr. Graham is the Evelyn Barry Director of Choral Programs and Senior Lecturer at Wellesley College, where she conducts the Wellesley College Choir, Chamber Singers, and Choral Scholars, in addition to teaching academic courses in the Music Department. Under her direction, the Wellesley College Choirs have toured internationally in Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Portugal, South Korea, and the Baltics, in addition to domestic tours annually. In 2010, the Choir was chosen to perform at the American Choral Directors Regional Convention in Philadelphia and appeared again in 2016 as part of the ACDA Eastern Division conference in Boston. Both the Chamber Singers and the Choir are featured in the motion picture Mona Lisa Smile.

Active in the Boston musical scene, she has conducted for the Handel + Haydn Society, directing their Holiday Sing concert for several seasons and enjoying a ten year history of working with their educational outreach program. She has toured with and served as cover conductor for the Boston Pops for twelve seasons and prepares the Holiday Pops Singers for Symphony Hall concerts. In 2016, she prepared members of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus for Charles Dutoit's BSO performance of Holst's The Planets.

She is a founding member and former President of the National Collegiate Choral Conductor’s Organization and was honored as a Life Member for her service in 2019. She has served on the board of the Eastern Division American Choral Directors Association and is currently President of the Massachusetts chapter. Dr. Graham is the 2021 winner of the American Prize Dale Warland Award in Choral Conducting.

A forty-year veteran of Boston’s professional stages, Jeremiah Kissel has played leading roles for the Huntington, American Repertory, New Repertory, and Merrimack Repertory theaters, as well as the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, the Lyric Stage, Shear Madness, and various out-of-town companies passing through Boston. Most recent roles include Tevye, Cyrano, Scrooge, Bernie Madoff, and Richard Nixon. Screen credits include The Town, The Fighter, Joy, Stronger, Castle Rock, Body of Proof, and HBO's Julia.

Kissel is a frequent guest of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He has collaborated with the BSO in performances of The Dream Lives On: A Portrait of the Kennedy Brothers, Casey at the Bat, The Composer is Dead, Here Comes a Bold Umbrellaphant, From the Earth to the Moon and Beyond, A Christmas Carol, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Polar Express, and, of course, Star Wars: The Story in Music. With other orchestras he has performed The Carnival of the Animals, Ellis Island: The Dream of America, Peter and the Wolf, The Wizard of Menlo Park, A Kennedy Portrait, and L’Histoire du Soldat. With the BSO he has performed The Defiant Requiem, Porgy and Bess, and Bluebeard’s Castle.

Kissel is the winner of several Norton awards, several IRNEs, an Arts Impulse, and a Helen Hayes Award, and in 2003 he received Boston’s highest onstage recognition, the Norton Prize for sustained excellence.