Sirens, a series of six a cappella movements by composer Mason Bates, explores texts about things that are alluring or attractive. Ragnar Bohlin found the piece itself, particularly the fifth movement, so compelling that he knew he had to have his own chorus perform it.
Gretchen Kuhrmann is the director of Choralis, a Northern Virginia-based chorus that will perform Bob Chilcott’s Requiem at the Chorus America conference on June 12. Chorus America asked her about the concert and her program to train and recruit young singers.
While pursuing one of his favorite pastimes, conductor Mark Shapiro happened upon a groundbreaking piece from the Romantic era.
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The influence of R. Nathaniel Dett has shaped Roland Carter's career ever since Carter took his first piano lessons under the watchful gaze of Dett's picture. Now Professor Emeritus at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga, Carter calls our attention to the 2014 centennial of Dett's "Listen to the Lambs."
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Research Memorandum Series No. 204
This article is a companion to Research Memorandum Series No. 202 and 203, also providing insight into the work of David Hamilton, a prolific composer and music educator from New Zealand.
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If you are currently a member, please log in or create a site user account for access to members-only content. If you are not currently a member, We invite you to join to access all Chorus America’s resources and benefits.
As a young girl, Abbie Betinis noticed that singing “Caroling, Caroling” during the holidays always brought tears to her grandpa’s eyes. Later she would learn that the famous carol was one of many composed by her great uncle Alfred Burt, who was carrying on a family tradition of carol writing begun by his father, the Rev. Bates Burt. In 2001, Betinis, by then a composer herself, decided to pick up the family carol writing tradition.
In celebration of the Britten centennial in 2013, this issue of American Choral Review features two articles on the music of Benjamin Britten: distinguished scholar Alfred Whittall offers reflections on the composer’s choral writing, and co-authors Thomas Folan and Nancy S. Niemi explore issues of identity in Britten’s Cantata Academica.
For the composing team of Paul Caldwell and Sean Ivory, inspiration usually comes in the form of a story that grabs them and won’t let go. Such was the case with “Beneath the African Sky”—a lullaby for a lost refugee girl that has become a cry for justice and a song of hope for children’s choruses around the world.
Using text from beloved author Lewis Carroll, composer Maurice Saylor adapted a well known "nonsense" poem into a full-length choral work for Cantate Chamber Singers (Washington DC). Gisele Becker, music director of the Singers and director of choral activities at George Washington University, explains the process of collaborating on a new composition derived from this unlikely source.
