25 Jan ArtsKC Awards Grant to Te Deum, Inc
Te Deum, Inc. recently received a grant for $750 from ArtsKC to support the overall mission of the organization. Te Deum, Inc.’s vision is the see sacred music’s significance, relevance, and quality enhanced in the Kansas City community.
Te Deum currently has two ensembles, Te Deum Chamber Choir and Te Deum Antiqua. The Chamber Choir’s mission is to perform diverse sacred choral repertoire in a uniquely relevant context, creating a musically inspiring and spiritually stirring experience. Antiqua’s mission is to provide Kansas City with a professional ensemble dedicated to historically informed performances of early music. Te Deum’s overarching goal is to touch people’s lives with music in a meaningful way.
The Kansas City artistic community abounds with high quality music, both instrumental and vocal. While the many musical offerings in the Kansas City area may be of the utmost professional quality, much of the region’s classical music offerings are not designed to speak directly to audience members in a personally relevant manner. The Te Deum Chamber Choir pays special attention to this idea of appealing to audience members both in terms of musical quality and spiritual relevance. During concerts, Te Deum’s Artistic Director addresses the audience to offer his perspective on how the concert might present concepts that could apply to the audience on a personal level, encouraging the audience members to actively listen and establish a deeper connection with the music. Te Deum Antiqua fills a specific need in the artistic community by presenting early music in a historically informed manner that is technically excellent, artistically splendid, and also educational.
In the past fiscal year, Te Deum served over 1,600 individuals at concerts throughout the metropolitan area. Over the past three years, Te Deum has produced at least four concerts a year, and has presented as many as four concerts in a single semester. In the spring of 2013, Te Deum presented J.S. Bach’s Mass in B-minor at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts’ Helzberg Hall to an audience of over 1,200. In the fall of 2013, Te Deum Antiqua made its premiere with two concerts in Kansas City, MO. With the addition of Antiqua, Te Deum anticipates that it will present between eight and ten concerts per year in the Kansas City area.
Te Deum’s mission is to present sacred choral music that is both musically gratifying and spiritually stirring. Through the development of new audiences for sacred music at the highest levels of refinement and beauty, Te Deum will uncover a distinct niche for outstanding sacred choral music in Kansas City.