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Glee Club Presents – American Spiritual Ensemble
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date & time
Sat, Feb 17, 2024
7:30 pm - 9:30 pm
ticketing
Tickets: $15 General | $5 Student | Faculty & Staff: two (2) free tickets*
* Faculty and Staff only: In addition to two (2) free tickets, all university Faculty and Staff can also purchase additional tickets at a price point of $5 per ticket. To reserve tickets, please visit the Princeton University ticketing site and log in using your Princeton ID.
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The American Spiritual Ensemble, conducted by Dr. Everett McCorvey, performs alongside The Princeton University Glee Club.
Program
arr. Stacey Gibbs Sit Down Servant
arr. Cedric Dent He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands
arr. Marques Garrett Hold On!
arr. William Henry Smith Walk Together Children
arr. Eurydice Osterman Oh, What a Beautiful City
Arr. Moses Hogan I Can Tell the World
arr. Undine Smith Moore Come Down, Angels
arr. Jacqueline Hairston Lord, I’ll Go
Traditional Spiritual Balm in Gilead
arr. Roosevelt Credit Heaven, Heaven
arr. Moses Hogan Cert’nly Lawd
arr. Damon Dandridge I Know I’ve Been Changed
arr. Marques Garrett Rise, Shine!
arr. Johnie Dean Go Down Moses
arr. Raymond Wise Keep Marching Till I Make It Home
arr. Roland Carter You Must Have That True Religion
arr. Johnie Dean Amen
About
The American Spiritual Ensemble was founded by Everett McCorvey in 1995. The mission of the American Spiritual Ensemble is to keep the American Negro Spiritual alive. Its members have sung in theaters and opera houses around the world, including the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Houston Grand Opera, The Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, and abroad in Italy, Germany, Britain, Scotland, Spain, China, and Japan. The repertoire of the American Spiritual Ensemble ranges from opera to spirituals to Broadway. The members of the American Spiritual Ensemble are soloists in their own right and have thrilled audiences around the world with their dynamic renditions of classic spirituals, jazz, and Broadway numbers highlighting the Black experience.
Everett McCorvey is a native of Montgomery, Alabama. He received his degrees from the University of Alabama, including a Doctor of Musical Arts. As a tenor soloist, Dr. McCorvey has performed in major centers around the world including the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Aspen Music Festival in Colorado, Radio City Music Hall in New York and in England, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, China, Hungary, Poland and the Czech and Slovak Republics. He joined the Tony Award winning Sherwin Goldman Production of Porgy and Bess at Radio City Music Hall in 1982 and was also part of the Metropolitan Opera’s Debut Production of Porgy and Bess in 1985. Dr. McCorvey is the founder and Music Director of the American Spiritual Ensemble, www.americanspiritualensemble.com, a group of 24 professional singers performing spirituals and other compositions of African American composers dedicated to keeping the American Negro Spiritual alive. McCorvey’s career has spanned all areas of the performing arts business from performer to musical director, stage director, voice teacher, producer, impresario, conductor, union representative, administrator, and mentor. He is in his tenth season as the Artistic Director of the National Chorale of New York City www.nationalchorale.org. He conducted the National Chorale, along with the US Army Field Band and Soldiers’ Chorus at Liberty State Park in New Jersey this past September 11th, in the 20th Anniversary Commemoration of the attacks on our country. He is on the opera faculty in the summers at the Bay View Music Festival in Petoskey, MI, www.bayviewassociation.org/performingarts/musicfestival, and is co- director of the Bay View Music Festival’s American Negro Spirituals Intensive program, a program dedicated to helping young singers learn about the American Negro Spirituals. He has served on the faculty of the American Institute of Musical Studies (AIMS) in Graz, Austria, and is a frequent guest conductor with the Ocean Grove Choral Music Festival in Ocean Grove, NJ. He holds an Endowed Chair in Opera Studies at the University of Kentucky where he is Director of Opera and Professor of Voice. www.ukoperatheatre.org. He is of the belief that every citizen should find ways to give back to their community and to their profession in which they serve, and with that in mind, he serves on many local, regional, and national boards and committees. In his home state of Kentucky, he is Chairman of the Kentucky Arts Council Board and nationally he is on the Sullivan Foundation Board of Trustees, www.sullivanfoundation.org, an organization dedicated to supporting young professional singers with career grants and study awards for continuing development. In September of 2010, Dr. McCorvey served as the Executive Producer of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Alltech 2010 FEI World Equestrian Games, which was broadcasted on NBC Sports and was viewed by over 500 million people worldwide. He is married to soprano Alicia Helm. They have three children. www.everettmccorvey.com
Ulysses S. Grant was President and Verdi’s Requiem had just premiered when the Princeton University Glee Club was founded by Andrew Fleming West, the first Dean of the Graduate College, in 1874. Since that time, the ensemble has established itself as the largest choral body on Princeton’s campus, and has distinguished itself both nationally and overseas. Nowadays the Glee Club performs frequently on Princeton’s campus, enjoying the wonderful acoustic and aesthetic of Richardson Auditorium in Alexander Hall. In the last few years performances have included Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Bach’s St. Matthew and St. John Passions and Mass in B Minor, Mozart’s Requiem, MacMillan’s Seven Last Words and Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Mass for the Endangered. In 2014 the Glee Club was the first collegiate choir to perform Wynton Marsalis’ Abyssinian Mass, and in 2018 gave the United States premiere of John Tavener’s Total Eclipse, alongside the world premiere of Shruthi Rajasekar’s Gaanam. The performing arts series ‘Glee Club Presents’ was founded in 2014 to bring professional vocal and choral artists to Princeton to work with and perform alongside the Glee Club. Since then the Glee Club has shared the Richardson stage with artists of the caliber of Tenebrae, Roomful of Teeth and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. The choir embraces a vast array of repertoire, from Renaissance motets and madrigals, Romantic partsongs, and 21st century choral commissions to the more traditional Glee Club fare of folk music and college songs. The spectrum of Glee Club members is every bit as broad as its repertoire: undergraduates and graduate students, scientists and poets, philosophers and economists – all walks of academic life represented in students from all over the world, knit together by a simple belief in the joy of singing together.
Gabriel Crouch is Director of Choral Activities and Professor of the Practice in Music at Princeton University. He began his musical career as an eight-year-old in the choir of Westminster Abbey, where his solo credits included a Royal Wedding, and performances which placed him on the solo stage with Jessye Norman and Sir Laurence Olivier. After completing a choral scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge, he was offered a place in the renowned a cappella group The King’s Singers in 1996. In the next eight years, he made a dozen recordings on the BMG label (including a Grammy nomination), and gave more than 900 performances in almost every major concert venue in the world. Since moving to the USA in 2005, he has built an international profile as a conductor and director, with recent engagements in Indonesia, Hawaii and Australia as well as Europe and the continental United States. In 2008 he was appointed musical director of the British early music ensemble Gallicantus, with whom he has released six recordings under the Signum label to rapturous reviews, garnering multiple ‘Editor’s Choice’ awards in Gramophone Magazine, Choir and Organ Magazine and the Early Music Review, and, for the 2012 release ‘The Word Unspoken’, a place on BBC Radio’s CD Review list of the top nine classical releases of the year. His recording of Lagrime di San Pietro by Orlando di Lasso was shortlisted for a Gramophone Award in 2014, and his follow-up recording – Sibylla (featuring music by Orlandus Lassus and Dmitri Tymoczko) was named ’star recording’ by Choir and Organ magazine in the summer of 2018. His most recent release is Mass for the Endangered, a new composition by Sarah Kirkland Snider released on the Nonesuch/New Amsterdam labels, which has garnered high acclaim from The New York Times, Boston Globe, NPR’s ‘All Things Considered’ and elsewhere.
About
The American Spiritual Ensemble was founded by Everett McCorvey in 1995. The mission of the American Spiritual Ensemble is to keep the American Negro Spiritual alive. Its members have sung in theaters and opera houses around the world, including the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Houston Grand Opera, The Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, and abroad in Italy, Germany, Britain, Scotland, Spain, China, and Japan. The repertoire of the American Spiritual Ensemble ranges from opera to spirituals to Broadway. The members of the American Spiritual Ensemble are soloists in their own right and have thrilled audiences around the world with their dynamic renditions of classic spirituals, jazz, and Broadway numbers highlighting the Black experience.
Everett McCorvey is a native of Montgomery, Alabama. He received his degrees from the University of Alabama, including a Doctor of Musical Arts. As a tenor soloist, Dr. McCorvey has performed in major centers around the world including the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Aspen Music Festival in Colorado, Radio City Music Hall in New York and in England, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, China, Hungary, Poland and the Czech and Slovak Republics. He joined the Tony Award winning Sherwin Goldman Production of Porgy and Bess at Radio City Music Hall in 1982 and was also part of the Metropolitan Opera’s Debut Production of Porgy and Bess in 1985. Dr. McCorvey is the founder and Music Director of the American Spiritual Ensemble, www.americanspiritualensemble.com, a group of 24 professional singers performing spirituals and other compositions of African American composers dedicated to keeping the American Negro Spiritual alive. McCorvey’s career has spanned all areas of the performing arts business from performer to musical director, stage director, voice teacher, producer, impresario, conductor, union representative, administrator, and mentor. He is in his tenth season as the Artistic Director of the National Chorale of New York City www.nationalchorale.org. He conducted the National Chorale, along with the US Army Field Band and Soldiers’ Chorus at Liberty State Park in New Jersey this past September 11th, in the 20th Anniversary Commemoration of the attacks on our country. He is on the opera faculty in the summers at the Bay View Music Festival in Petoskey, MI, www.bayviewassociation.org/performingarts/musicfestival, and is co- director of the Bay View Music Festival’s American Negro Spirituals Intensive program, a program dedicated to helping young singers learn about the American Negro Spirituals. He has served on the faculty of the American Institute of Musical Studies (AIMS) in Graz, Austria, and is a frequent guest conductor with the Ocean Grove Choral Music Festival in Ocean Grove, NJ. He holds an Endowed Chair in Opera Studies at the University of Kentucky where he is Director of Opera and Professor of Voice. www.ukoperatheatre.org. He is of the belief that every citizen should find ways to give back to their community and to their profession in which they serve, and with that in mind, he serves on many local, regional, and national boards and committees. In his home state of Kentucky, he is Chairman of the Kentucky Arts Council Board and nationally he is on the Sullivan Foundation Board of Trustees, www.sullivanfoundation.org, an organization dedicated to supporting young professional singers with career grants and study awards for continuing development. In September of 2010, Dr. McCorvey served as the Executive Producer of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Alltech 2010 FEI World Equestrian Games, which was broadcasted on NBC Sports and was viewed by over 500 million people worldwide. He is married to soprano Alicia Helm. They have three children. www.everettmccorvey.com
Ulysses S. Grant was President and Verdi’s Requiem had just premiered when the Princeton University Glee Club was founded by Andrew Fleming West, the first Dean of the Graduate College, in 1874. Since that time, the ensemble has established itself as the largest choral body on Princeton’s campus, and has distinguished itself both nationally and overseas. Nowadays the Glee Club performs frequently on Princeton’s campus, enjoying the wonderful acoustic and aesthetic of Richardson Auditorium in Alexander Hall. In the last few years performances have included Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Bach’s St. Matthew and St. John Passions and Mass in B Minor, Mozart’s Requiem, MacMillan’s Seven Last Words and Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Mass for the Endangered. In 2014 the Glee Club was the first collegiate choir to perform Wynton Marsalis’ Abyssinian Mass, and in 2018 gave the United States premiere of John Tavener’s Total Eclipse, alongside the world premiere of Shruthi Rajasekar’s Gaanam. The performing arts series ‘Glee Club Presents’ was founded in 2014 to bring professional vocal and choral artists to Princeton to work with and perform alongside the Glee Club. Since then the Glee Club has shared the Richardson stage with artists of the caliber of Tenebrae, Roomful of Teeth and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. The choir embraces a vast array of repertoire, from Renaissance motets and madrigals, Romantic partsongs, and 21st century choral commissions to the more traditional Glee Club fare of folk music and college songs. The spectrum of Glee Club members is every bit as broad as its repertoire: undergraduates and graduate students, scientists and poets, philosophers and economists – all walks of academic life represented in students from all over the world, knit together by a simple belief in the joy of singing together.
Gabriel Crouch is Director of Choral Activities and Professor of the Practice in Music at Princeton University. He began his musical career as an eight-year-old in the choir of Westminster Abbey, where his solo credits included a Royal Wedding, and performances which placed him on the solo stage with Jessye Norman and Sir Laurence Olivier. After completing a choral scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge, he was offered a place in the renowned a cappella group The King’s Singers in 1996. In the next eight years, he made a dozen recordings on the BMG label (including a Grammy nomination), and gave more than 900 performances in almost every major concert venue in the world. Since moving to the USA in 2005, he has built an international profile as a conductor and director, with recent engagements in Indonesia, Hawaii and Australia as well as Europe and the continental United States. In 2008 he was appointed musical director of the British early music ensemble Gallicantus, with whom he has released six recordings under the Signum label to rapturous reviews, garnering multiple ‘Editor’s Choice’ awards in Gramophone Magazine, Choir and Organ Magazine and the Early Music Review, and, for the 2012 release ‘The Word Unspoken’, a place on BBC Radio’s CD Review list of the top nine classical releases of the year. His recording of Lagrime di San Pietro by Orlando di Lasso was shortlisted for a Gramophone Award in 2014, and his follow-up recording – Sibylla (featuring music by Orlandus Lassus and Dmitri Tymoczko) was named ’star recording’ by Choir and Organ magazine in the summer of 2018. His most recent release is Mass for the Endangered, a new composition by Sarah Kirkland Snider released on the Nonesuch/New Amsterdam labels, which has garnered high acclaim from The New York Times, Boston Globe, NPR’s ‘All Things Considered’ and elsewhere.