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Yale at Princeton – The Football Concert
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One Year In, Here’s What Music Faculty Nathalie Joachim & Tyondai Braxton Are Up To
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Sat, Nov 4, 2023
7:30 pm - 9:30 pm
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Tickets: $15 General | $5 Student
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The Yale Glee Club visits the Princeton University Glee Club in the annual “Football Concert” — a choral face-off tradition that is over a century old, taking place the weekend before the Princeton-Yale football game.
Yale Glee Club
Jeffrey Douma, director
Princeton University Glee Club
Gabriel Crouch, director
About
Yale Glee Club
From its earliest days as a group of thirteen men from the Class of 1863 to its current incarnation as a 85-voice all-gender chorus, the Yale Glee Club, Yale’s principal undergraduate mixed chorus and oldest musical organization, has represented the best in collegiate choral music.
In recent seasons, the Glee Club’s performances have received rave reviews in the national press, from The New York Times (“One of the best collegiate singing ensembles, and one of the most adventurous…an exciting, beautifully sung concert at Carnegie Hall”) to The Washington Post (“Under the direction of Jeffrey Douma, the sopranos – indeed, all the voices – sang as one voice, with flawless intonation…their treacherous semitones and contrapuntal subtleties became otherworldly, transcendent even”).
The students who sing in the Yale Glee Club might be majors in music or biology, English or political science, philosophy or mathematics. They are drawn together by a love of singing and a common understanding that raising one’s voice with others to create something beautiful is one of the noblest human pursuits.
The Glee Club’s repertoire embraces a broad spectrum of music from the 16th century to the present, including motets, contemporary works, music from folk traditions throughout the world, and traditional Yale songs. Committed to the creation of new music, the Glee Club presents frequent premieres of newly commissioned works and sponsors two annual competitions for young composers. They have been featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition, WQXR’s “The Choral Mix,” and BBC Radio 3’s “The Choir.”
Choral orchestral masterworks are also an important part of the Glee Club’s repertoire; recent performances include Verdi Requiem, Mozart Requiem, Stravinsky Symphony of Psalms, Shaw Music in Common Time, Orff Carmina Burana, Vaughan Williams Dona Nobis Pacem, Bernstein Chichester Psalms, Britten War Requiem and Cantata Misericordium, Fauré Requiem, Haydn Missa in Tempore Belli, Missa in angustiis, and Creation, Brahms Ein deutsches Requiem, Nänie, and Schicksalied, Mendelssohn Elijah, Penderecki Credo, Aaron Jay Kernis Symphony of Meditations, Purrington Words for Departure, and choral symphonies of Mahler and Beethoven.
One of the most traveled choruses in the world, the Yale Glee Club has performed in every major city in the United States and embarked on its first overseas tour in 1928. It has since appeared before enthusiastic audiences throughout North and South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa. Historically a leading advocate of international choral exchange, the Glee Club has hosted countless guest ensembles at Yale and at New York’s Lincoln Center in conjunction with its own international festivals. In 2012, the Glee Club carried this tradition forward with the first Yale International Choral Festival in New Haven, and in June of 2018 presented the third incarnation of the festival, hosting choirs from Sri Lanka, Mexico, Germany, and New York City, along with the Yale Alumni Chorus and Yale Choral Artists.
The Glee Club has appeared under the baton of many distinguished guest conductors from Leopold Stokowski to Sir David Willcocks to Robert Shaw. Recent collaborations have included performances under the direction of Marin Alsop, Grete Pedersen, Matthew Halls, Sir Neville Marriner, Dale Warland, Nicholas McGegan, Stefan Parkman, Simon Carrington, Erwin Ortner, David Hill, Craig Hella Johnson, and Helmuth Rilling.
The Yale Glee Club has had only seven directors in its 162-year history and is currently led by Jeffrey Douma. Previous directors include Marshall Bartholomew (1921-1953), who first brought the group to international prominence and who expanded the Glee Club’s repertoire beyond college songs to a broader range of great choral repertoire; Fenno Heath (1953-1992), under whose inspired leadership the Glee Club made the transition from TTBB chorus to mixed chorus; and most recently David Connell (1992-2002), whose vision helped carry the best traditions of this ensemble into the twenty-first century.
Jeffrey Douma is the Marshall Bartholomew Professor in the Practice of Choral Music at the Yale School of Music, and has served since 2003 as Director of the Yale Glee Club, hailed under his direction by The New York Times as “one of the best collegiate singing ensembles, and one of the most adventurous.” He also heads Yale’s graduate program in choral conducting and serves as founding Director of the Yale Choral Artists and Artistic Director of the Yale International Choral Festival.
Douma has appeared as guest conductor with choruses and orchestras on six continents, including the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Orchestra, Singapore’s Metropolitan Festival Orchestra, Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, Estonian National Youth Orchestra, Daejeon Philharmonic Choir, Buenos Aires Philharmonic Orchestra, Moscow Chamber Orchestra, Tbilisi Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Solistas de la Habana, Istanbul’s Tekfen Philharmonic, Norway’s Edvard Grieg Kor, the Symphony Choir of Johannesburg, the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, and the Central Conservatory’s EOS Orchestra in Beijing, as well as the Yale Philharmonia and Yale Symphony Orchestras. He also serves as Musical Director of the Yale Alumni Chorus, which he has lead on eleven international tours. He served previously as Choirmaster at the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Hartford, CT, where performances with the professional Schola Cantorum ranged from Bach St. John Passion with baroque orchestra to Arvo Pärt Te Deum, and recently served as Director of Music at the Unitarian Society of New Haven.
Choirs under his direction have performed in Leipzig’s Neue Gewandhaus, Dvorak Hall in Prague, St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Notre Dame de Paris, Singapore’s Esplanade, Argentina’s Teatro Colon, the Oriental Arts Center in Shanghai, Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher and Alice Tully Halls, and Carnegie Hall, and he has prepared choruses for performances under such eminent conductors as Marin Alsop, William Christie, Valery Gergiev, Sir Neville Marriner, Sir David Willcocks, Dale Warland, Krzysztof Penderecki, Nicholas McGegan, Craig Hella Johnson, and Helmuth Rilling.
Douma has presented at conferences of the ACDA and NCCO, and the Yale Glee Club has appeared as a featured ensemble at NCCO national and ACDA divisional conferences. Active with musicians of all ages, Douma served for several years on the conducting faculty at the Interlochen Center for the Arts. He frequently serves as clinician for festivals and honor choirs. Recent engagements include conducting masterclasses at the China International Chorus Festival, the University of Michigan School of Music, the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, the Royal Academy of Music in London, the Hochschule der Künste in Zurich, the Florence International Choral Festival, and the Berlin Radio Choir’s International Masterclass, as well as residencies at the Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing and at Luther College as Visiting Conductor of the internationally renowned Nordic Choir.
An advocate of new music, Douma established the Yale Glee Club Emerging Composers Competition and Fenno Heath Award, and has premiered new works by such composers as Jennifer Higdon, Joel Thompson, Caroline Shaw, Dominick Argento, Paola Prestini, Ayanna Woods, Bright Sheng, Ned Rorem, Rodrigo Cadet, Ted Hearne, Han Lash, Martin Bresnick, David Lang, Derrick Skye, Rene Clausen, Bongani Magatyana, and James Macmillan. He also serves as editor of the Yale Glee Club New Classics Choral Series, published by Boosey & Hawkes. His original compositions are published by G. Schirmer and Boosey & Hawkes. A tenor, Douma has appeared as an ensemble member and soloist with some of the nation’s leading professional choirs.
In 2003, Douma was one of only two North American conductors invited to compete for the first Eric Ericson Award, the premier international competition for choral conductors. Prior to his appointment at Yale he served as Director of Choral Activities at Carroll College and taught on the conducting faculties of Smith College and St. Cloud State University.
Douma earned the Bachelor of Music degree from Concordia College, Moorhead, MN, and the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in conducting from the University of Michigan. He lives in Hamden, CT, with his wife, pianist and conductor Erika Schroth, and their two children.
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
Yale Glee Club
From its earliest days as a group of thirteen men from the Class of 1863 to its current incarnation as a 85-voice all-gender chorus, the Yale Glee Club, Yale’s principal undergraduate mixed chorus and oldest musical organization, has represented the best in collegiate choral music.
In recent seasons, the Glee Club’s performances have received rave reviews in the national press, from The New York Times (“One of the best collegiate singing ensembles, and one of the most adventurous…an exciting, beautifully sung concert at Carnegie Hall”) to The Washington Post (“Under the direction of Jeffrey Douma, the sopranos – indeed, all the voices – sang as one voice, with flawless intonation…their treacherous semitones and contrapuntal subtleties became otherworldly, transcendent even”).
The students who sing in the Yale Glee Club might be majors in music or biology, English or political science, philosophy or mathematics. They are drawn together by a love of singing and a common understanding that raising one’s voice with others to create something beautiful is one of the noblest human pursuits.
The Glee Club’s repertoire embraces a broad spectrum of music from the 16th century to the present, including motets, contemporary works, music from folk traditions throughout the world, and traditional Yale songs. Committed to the creation of new music, the Glee Club presents frequent premieres of newly commissioned works and sponsors two annual competitions for young composers. They have been featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition, WQXR’s “The Choral Mix,” and BBC Radio 3’s “The Choir.”
Choral orchestral masterworks are also an important part of the Glee Club’s repertoire; recent performances include Verdi Requiem, Mozart Requiem, Stravinsky Symphony of Psalms, Shaw Music in Common Time, Orff Carmina Burana, Vaughan Williams Dona Nobis Pacem, Bernstein Chichester Psalms, Britten War Requiem and Cantata Misericordium, Fauré Requiem, Haydn Missa in Tempore Belli, Missa in angustiis, and Creation, Brahms Ein deutsches Requiem, Nänie, and Schicksalied, Mendelssohn Elijah, Penderecki Credo, Aaron Jay Kernis Symphony of Meditations, Purrington Words for Departure, and choral symphonies of Mahler and Beethoven.
One of the most traveled choruses in the world, the Yale Glee Club has performed in every major city in the United States and embarked on its first overseas tour in 1928. It has since appeared before enthusiastic audiences throughout North and South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa. Historically a leading advocate of international choral exchange, the Glee Club has hosted countless guest ensembles at Yale and at New York’s Lincoln Center in conjunction with its own international festivals. In 2012, the Glee Club carried this tradition forward with the first Yale International Choral Festival in New Haven, and in June of 2018 presented the third incarnation of the festival, hosting choirs from Sri Lanka, Mexico, Germany, and New York City, along with the Yale Alumni Chorus and Yale Choral Artists.
The Glee Club has appeared under the baton of many distinguished guest conductors from Leopold Stokowski to Sir David Willcocks to Robert Shaw. Recent collaborations have included performances under the direction of Marin Alsop, Grete Pedersen, Matthew Halls, Sir Neville Marriner, Dale Warland, Nicholas McGegan, Stefan Parkman, Simon Carrington, Erwin Ortner, David Hill, Craig Hella Johnson, and Helmuth Rilling.
The Yale Glee Club has had only seven directors in its 162-year history and is currently led by Jeffrey Douma. Previous directors include Marshall Bartholomew (1921-1953), who first brought the group to international prominence and who expanded the Glee Club’s repertoire beyond college songs to a broader range of great choral repertoire; Fenno Heath (1953-1992), under whose inspired leadership the Glee Club made the transition from TTBB chorus to mixed chorus; and most recently David Connell (1992-2002), whose vision helped carry the best traditions of this ensemble into the twenty-first century.
Jeffrey Douma is the Marshall Bartholomew Professor in the Practice of Choral Music at the Yale School of Music, and has served since 2003 as Director of the Yale Glee Club, hailed under his direction by The New York Times as “one of the best collegiate singing ensembles, and one of the most adventurous.” He also heads Yale’s graduate program in choral conducting and serves as founding Director of the Yale Choral Artists and Artistic Director of the Yale International Choral Festival.
Douma has appeared as guest conductor with choruses and orchestras on six continents, including the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Orchestra, Singapore’s Metropolitan Festival Orchestra, Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, Estonian National Youth Orchestra, Daejeon Philharmonic Choir, Buenos Aires Philharmonic Orchestra, Moscow Chamber Orchestra, Tbilisi Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Solistas de la Habana, Istanbul’s Tekfen Philharmonic, Norway’s Edvard Grieg Kor, the Symphony Choir of Johannesburg, the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, and the Central Conservatory’s EOS Orchestra in Beijing, as well as the Yale Philharmonia and Yale Symphony Orchestras. He also serves as Musical Director of the Yale Alumni Chorus, which he has lead on eleven international tours. He served previously as Choirmaster at the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Hartford, CT, where performances with the professional Schola Cantorum ranged from Bach St. John Passion with baroque orchestra to Arvo Pärt Te Deum, and recently served as Director of Music at the Unitarian Society of New Haven.
Choirs under his direction have performed in Leipzig’s Neue Gewandhaus, Dvorak Hall in Prague, St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Notre Dame de Paris, Singapore’s Esplanade, Argentina’s Teatro Colon, the Oriental Arts Center in Shanghai, Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher and Alice Tully Halls, and Carnegie Hall, and he has prepared choruses for performances under such eminent conductors as Marin Alsop, William Christie, Valery Gergiev, Sir Neville Marriner, Sir David Willcocks, Dale Warland, Krzysztof Penderecki, Nicholas McGegan, Craig Hella Johnson, and Helmuth Rilling.
Douma has presented at conferences of the ACDA and NCCO, and the Yale Glee Club has appeared as a featured ensemble at NCCO national and ACDA divisional conferences. Active with musicians of all ages, Douma served for several years on the conducting faculty at the Interlochen Center for the Arts. He frequently serves as clinician for festivals and honor choirs. Recent engagements include conducting masterclasses at the China International Chorus Festival, the University of Michigan School of Music, the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, the Royal Academy of Music in London, the Hochschule der Künste in Zurich, the Florence International Choral Festival, and the Berlin Radio Choir’s International Masterclass, as well as residencies at the Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing and at Luther College as Visiting Conductor of the internationally renowned Nordic Choir.
An advocate of new music, Douma established the Yale Glee Club Emerging Composers Competition and Fenno Heath Award, and has premiered new works by such composers as Jennifer Higdon, Joel Thompson, Caroline Shaw, Dominick Argento, Paola Prestini, Ayanna Woods, Bright Sheng, Ned Rorem, Rodrigo Cadet, Ted Hearne, Han Lash, Martin Bresnick, David Lang, Derrick Skye, Rene Clausen, Bongani Magatyana, and James Macmillan. He also serves as editor of the Yale Glee Club New Classics Choral Series, published by Boosey & Hawkes. His original compositions are published by G. Schirmer and Boosey & Hawkes. A tenor, Douma has appeared as an ensemble member and soloist with some of the nation’s leading professional choirs.
In 2003, Douma was one of only two North American conductors invited to compete for the first Eric Ericson Award, the premier international competition for choral conductors. Prior to his appointment at Yale he served as Director of Choral Activities at Carroll College and taught on the conducting faculties of Smith College and St. Cloud State University.
Douma earned the Bachelor of Music degree from Concordia College, Moorhead, MN, and the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in conducting from the University of Michigan. He lives in Hamden, CT, with his wife, pianist and conductor Erika Schroth, and their two children.
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.