Yale Professor Marguerite Brooks, chair of the choral conducting program at the School of Music, director of choral music at the Institute of Sacred Music, and founding conductor of the Yale Camerata, will receive the 2019 Alfred Nash Patterson Lifetime Achievement Award at Choral Arts New England’s 35th annual awards ceremony, on Sunday, November 3, 2019, at Old South Church in Boston. The event will also celebrate the awarding of grants to 15 New England choruses for performances and other projects. All are welcome to attend.
The Lifetime Achievement Award has been awarded annually since 1994 to individuals who have made exceptional contributions to choral singing and its culture within New England. This year’s award recognizes Marguerite Brooks’s inspirational leadership, teaching, and artistry. On the Yale faculty since 1985, she has taught hundreds of choral directors and touched the lives of many thousands of choral singers and their audiences. As founder and conductor for over 30 years of the Yale Camerata and Chamber Choir, she has brought together students, faculty and staff as well as community members from throughout New England to perform choral music from virtually every age and genre.
Professor Brooks’s broad vision for music-making has been passed on to her students, who can be found in positions of musical leadership throughout New England and around the world. Among her students are the founding conductors of the vocal ensembles Conspirare, Roomful of Teeth, and Seraphic Fire, the Music Directors of major New England choruses such as Chorus pro Musica, CONCORA, and Seraphim Singers, and numerous leaders of church and religious music programs. In a recent survey, alumni often cited her as their primary reason for attending Yale and as the person who influenced them the most.
The Alfred Nash Patterson Grant award recipients for 2019 are the Burlington Choral Society (Burlington, Vt.), Richard Riley, Artistic Director; Cantilena (Arlington, Mass.), Jennifer Kane, Music Director; ChoralArt (Portland, Maine), Robert Russell, Music Director; Chorus Angelicus (Torrington, Conn.), Gabriel Löfvall, Artistic Director; Commonwealth Chorale (Newtonville, Mass.), David Carrier, Artistic Director; Coro Allegro (Boston, Mass.), David Hodgkins, Artistic Director; Fairfield County Children’s Choir (Trumbull, Conn.), Jon Noyes, Music Director; Greater Boston Choral Consortium (Boston, Mass.), Alison LaRosa, Chair; Lorelei Ensemble (Cambridge, Mass.), Beth Willer, Artistic Director; Montpelier Community Gospel Choir (Montpelier, Vt.), John Harrison, Director; New Hampshire Master Chorale (Plymouth, N.H.), Dan Perkins, Music Director; Outer Cape Chorale (So. Wellfleet, Mass.), Allison Beavan, Artistic Director; Somerville Community Chorus (Somerville, Mass.), David Giessow, Music Director; South Shore Children’s Chorus (Quincy, Mass.), Kirsten Oberoi, Artistic Director; and St Mary Schola (Falmouth, Maine), Bruce Fithian, Music Director.
More information about Choral Arts New England and the awards ceremony can be found at https://www.choralarts-newengland.org/
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