New Counterpoint benefit concert launching Saturday

A new seasonal concert is launching Saturday night, Dec. 7, that organizers hope will become an annual event to support the Chattanooga Area Food Bank.

Tim Hinck and Thomas West have collaborated on Counterpoint Concert, a benefit performance that will present J.S. Bach’s “Magnificat” as well as an original work by Hinck, “But She’s Got Eyes,” based on text by poet and former East Tennessean Lynn Powell.

Hinck will conduct 15 singers and 18 instrumentalists in this performance, which West is producing. The musicians will be made up of local singers, primarily from Opera Tennessee, and the New York Citybased Collaborative Arts Ensemble, of which West is a member. The instrumentalists will include members of the guest ensemble as well as Chattanooga Symphony & Opera and Figment Ensemble.

“Their group is a collective of artists of different disciplines who come together to do creative projects. They work a lot of times with new works, usually combining those with existing works from the classical repertoire,” Hinck describes of the Collaborative Arts Ensemble.

West says the guest artists have performed at Carnegie Hall and Tanglewood, and attended Yale, Juilliard, Bard College and New England Conservatory. Philip Stoddard, a renowned off-Broadway actor, is the ensemble’s narrator.

Guest soloists joining

COLLABORATIVE ARTS ENSEMBLE CONTRIBUTED IMAGE Among musicians participating in the Counterpoint Concert will be top row, from left, Daniel McGrew, Tim Hinck and Arkai string duo. Bottom row, from left, are Elaine Daiber, Thomas West and Philip Stoddard.