Classical music has a new season in Tucson: Summertime

There’s a reason Benjamin Hansen called his intergenerational choir the Helios Ensemble when he formed it in 2014.

Most of its members are year-round Tucson residents, meaning that they have no problem sticking around for our recent triple-digit heatwave.

“That’s why we’re called the Helios Ensemble, because we have people here in the summer who must worship Helios, the sun god,” Hansen joked.

Every summer since launching, Hansen has brought the mixed-voice ensemble together in June to work on a special summertime concert that’s held in mid-July. This summer’s concert is on Sunday, July 16.

“We found that we’ve gotten a good audience for the summer because there aren’t any concerts going on,” said Hansen, adding that one of the ensemble’s best-attended concerts was last summer’s “Mosaic Mass” concert.

Helios is the only group performing choral music in the summertime and is one of three organizations — Helios, St. Andrew’s Bach Society and Arizona Friends of Chamber Music — putting on classical music concerts in the summer months.

The 2023 summer concert “Bach the Stars” focuses on works by Bach, including a series of cantatas, as well as choral works by Wolfram Buchenberg, Mason Bates, Emily Drum and Jonathan Dove.

Tucson composer Dane Carten will conduct the choir when it performs his work “Above Their Heads.” Carten is a choral conducting grad student at the University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music.

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The choir of 45 will share the Catalina United Methodist Church stage, 2700 E. Speedway, with Guy Whatley, the popular organist and harpsichordist who is a regular on Tucson chamber music stages and has performed the complete keyboard works of Bach, Handel and others.

Sunday’s concert begins at 4 p.m. Tickets are $20 or two for $35 at the door; it’s $18 and $30 in advance at heliosensemble.org, and students with ID are admitted free. Preferred seating is $40.

Also this week, Arizona Friends of Chamber Music continues its summer concert series with “Rediscovered,” featuring clarinetist Jackie Glazier and pianist Daniel Linder, on July 19. The concert at 7 p.m. will be held in Holsclaw Hall at the UA Fred Fox School of Music, East Speedway and North Park Avenue. Tickets are $45, $12 for students in advance at arizonachambermusic.org.

Linder and Glazier are both UA music professors. Their concert will include lost and forgotten works for clarinet and piano by DeCruck, Beyer, Cowell and Prokofiev.

St. Andrew’s Bach Society is also in action this weekend with Tucson flutist Zach Warren and pianist Michael Dauphinais. The pair will perform works by often overlooked composers including Lili Boulanger and Amy Beach as well as Valerie Coleman’s “Fanmi Imèn,” inspired by Maya Angelou’s poem “Human Family.”

Tickets for the concert at 2 p.m. Sunday at Grace St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 2331 E. Adams St., are $15 for general admission, $25 for reserved seats through standrewsbach.org.