Blue Mountains sisters Miriam and Elizabeth Cooney will perform with Phoenix Choir in their upcoming Bach concert, playing oboe and violin, respectively, in the popular cantata Sleepers, Wake!
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A Year 12 student at the Blue Mountains Grammar School, Miriam is also Principal Oboe with the Sydney Youth Orchestra and a regular soloist with Orpheus Strings. Elizabeth, well known locally as an accomplished violinist, is Concert Master with Orpheus Strings and plays with the acclaimed Kedumba Quartet.
The concert will open with a seasonal Bach cantata, Christ Lay in Death's Dark Prison, which starts with the emotional grief of Passiontide before flowering into its Easter theme.
Vocal soloists are another duo, husband and wife team Lewis Barber (Baritone) and Julie Paik (Soprano), who last performed with the choir as soloists in last year's performance of Haydn's Seasons.
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Linking the two cantatas, an a cappella group from the choir will perform Lotti's Crucifixus in its full eight-part glory. Although this work has delightful echoes of Renaissance polyphony, Antonio Lotti was broadly contemporary with JS Bach and the work will provide an ethereal counterpoint to the more baroque cantatas.
Led by musical director, Rowen Fox, Phoenix Choir will perform Bach-to-Bach Cantatas on Saturday, April 6 at 4pm at St Hilda's Anglican Church in Katoomba and on Sunday, April 7 at 3pm at Hoskins Uniting Church in Lithgow. Tickets $28 (concession $22) are available at the door or from phoenixchoir.org.au/tickets.
