A long-time Athens music conductor gathered singers from around the nation for a concert of classical music over the weekend.
Joseph Napoli has conducted classical music performers in Athens for decades. He founded the Athens Master Chorale in 1989 and conducted a group of local singers at Carnegie Hall in New York City last year. Saturday’s Athens Choral Festival was a reunion of sorts for that chorus.
He says that in addition to singers from around Georgia and Athens, people from all over the country were invited to participate.
“This is a put-together group, singers from ten states around the country.”
By livestreaming rehearsals, Napoli says everybody was able to prepare themselves for the concert. Suzanne Richardson-White drove 20 hours with her family from Connecticut for the performance. The draw—the chance to once again join the Athens singing family headed by Napoli.
“I’ve known Joe–I sang with the Athens Master Chorale for about ten and a half years when we lived here. He was kind of like my Athens dad when I lived here,” says Richardson-White.
Richardson-White was one of over 60 other singers Saturday night, plus a small orchestra. Napoli conducted the Solemn Vespers by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He also chose Lux: Dawn from on High by a contemporary composer, Dan Forrest.
“The Mozart is kind of straightforward and the Lux is sweeping, highs and lows, louds and softs,” says Napoli. “There’s just so many more things that can go wrong, and a lot that can go right.”
Napoli says he has been conducting music for over 60 years.
“Somehow the people like to do it with me. That part makes it easy. I just announce, ‘We’re doing a concert,’ and they all say, ‘Oh, great, yeah, I’m coming,’ so that’s a really nice thing to feel, too,” he says.
Though his tenure as conductor of Athens Master Chorale may have officially ended last year, Napoli continues to fill stages in the Classic City.
