Saratoga Choral Festival announces summer 2015 new singer auditions

 

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. The Saratoga Choral Festival seeks experienced singers with good sight-reading and vocal abilities for its fifteenth season. Singers will meet for rehearsals over a three-week period in Saratoga Springs beginning Tuesday, July 14th and will perform in a concert at the SPA LITTLE THEATER on Sunday, August 2nd, at 3:00 p.m. As part of the city’s centennial celebration, this summer’s concert will feature music by world-renowned Yaddo composers Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Del Tredici, and spiritual and sacred choral works by Nathaniel Dett, one of the few African American composers invited to Yaddo in the early years.

 

Included on the program is rarely heard music by a more recent Yaddo resident and Skidmore professor Evan Mack (The Fountain) and Thomas Oboe Lee (Mechthild von Magdeburg for chorus and strings). Other selections will be Del Tredici’s Acrostic Song from Final Alice, Copland’s The Promise of Living, Bernstein’s Wonderful Town, Louise Talma’s Let’s Touch the Sky for choir and winds, Virgil Thompson’s Hymns from the Old South, Ned Rorem’s Give All to Love for choir and piano, and more.

 

This is the 15th anniversary of the Saratoga Choral Festival that began in 2001. In August 2004, the chorus performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Mahler’s 3rd Symphony with the Harlem Boys Choir, Charles Dutoit conducting, at SPAC. Previous seasons have featured music ranging from Bach’s Magnificat, with members of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and Gretchaninov’s Liturgia Domestica to a 2012 performance of the music of Karl Jenkins and a 2013 tribute to Dave Brubeck with jazz pianist Eldar Jangirov. Performances are held in the Spa Little Theater, the summer home of Opera Saratoga and the Saratoga Chamber Music Festival, in Saratoga Spa State Park.

 

The Festival is under the artistic direction of Andrea Goodman, currently the Director of the Cantilena Chamber Choir and the Northern Berkshire Chorale in Western Massachusetts, and former director of Choruses at Skidmore College.

 

Participation in the Choir will be considered on the basis of a submitted resume or letter detailing choral experience and an in-person audition for new members in Saratoga Springs on Tuesday, June 16th. Applicants must possess a good voice and have had some recent experience in singing choral music. For further information or registration, the Festival website address is www.saratogachoralfest.org. One may also register through the email address satbchoir @yahoo.com. Our phone number is (518)-791-0185. Registration deadline is June 1st, 2015.