250 singers through choral orchestral masterworks and prepares
the choirs for collaborative performances with other artists and
ensembles, including the Cleveland Orchestra, Russian National
Orchestra, Florida Orchestra, Itzhak Perlman, Andrea Bocelli, and
Kristin Chenoweth, among many others.
As the new artistic director of the Master Chorale of Tampa
Bay, Karlin will prepare the chorale for concerts, including those
with The Florida Orchestra, as well as a concert tour to New York
City for the ensemble’s Carnegie Hall debut. Now entering his
sixth season with the Master Chorale of South Florida, Karlin will
conduct the 120-voice chorus, orchestra, and guest artists through
classical monoliths—Haydn’s Creation, Bernstein’s Chichester
Psalms, and Berlioz’ Te Deum—as well as a commissioned work
by leading American composer, Dominick Diorio, and lighter fare
for a Holiday Pops program.
Karlin holds a bachelor’s of arts in voice from Florida State
University and master’s of music from the University of South
Florida.
C L A I R D E L U N E
Claude Debussy (1862-1918) • Duration: ca. 5 minutes
Despite his short stature, Debussy was a towering figure
in the world of music, the creator of a unique soundscape who
challenged the dominance of Germany and became what the
composer John Adams calls the first true modernist.
He was a master of suggestion, freeing notes likes butterflies
from a cage, but his scores built on the constructs of solid
musicianship. He dissolved convention into a malleable language
of harmony, texture, and color that changed the course of early
20th century music. Debussy’s opera Pelleas et Melisande moved
beyond the philosophical grip of Wagner, and his fascination with
the Orient and the Javanese gamelan steered him further away
from the European old guard.
“Few composers ever had so precise an image of the music
they wanted to write,’’ notes Stephen Walsh in his 2018 biography
Debussy: A Painter in Sound, “and even fewer have been so
ruthlessly meticulous in the search for the exact expression of that
image.’’
It might seem ironic that for all his influence, Debussy’s bestloved
work is the short piano piece, Clair de Lune (Moonlight),