VAN
FEATURES
Melodia presents "A Brighter Garden"
Posted 4/15/2025
Melodia Women’s Choir, New York City’s premier women’s chorus, is thrilled to present its Spring 2025 concert, "A Brighter Garden," on Saturday, May 3 at 7:00 PM at the Church of St. Luke in the Fields, 487 Hudson Street. The concert will showcase an intriguing blend of choral works, offering a musical bouquet of beauty, passion and surprise.
"'A Brighter Garden' is a potpourri of everything we love about music -- from ethereal Bulgarian folk harmonies to the sumptuous choral sounds of Fauré, all woven together with an affinity for beauty and expressiveness," says Cynthia Powell, artistic director and conductor of Melodia.
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Western Wind: into the future
Posted 3/26/2025
"This was a life-changing week for me."
This is how most folks departing a summer Western Wind workshop sum up their week of small-group a cappella singing, and not just on account of the lush New England venue. The terms "impactful" and "life-changing" could just as easily be applied to The Western Wind's concerts, recordings and outreach events.
The Western Wind Vocal Ensemble, formed in 1969 at the peak of the Early Music Movement, first sang madrigals and other Renaissance fare. Their repertoire was soon expanded to include music of all sorts, some of it composed for 6-part a cappella delivery, some of it adapted for this voicing.
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- Cantori New York, conducted by Mark Shapiro, has released its recording Found Again, comprising works for chorus and instruments by Lembit Beecher, Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate and John Rommereim, on Navona Records. See www.navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6703/. (2025-3-26)
- The Cecilia Chorus of New York, conducted by Mark Shapiro, has released its recording of Daron Hagen’s human rights cantata Everyone, Everywhere on Naxos Records. The chorus premiered Hagen’s cantata, which interleaves articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with quotations from human rights luminaries throughout history, in Carnegie Hall in December 2023. Performers include The Cecilia Chorus of New York, Every Voice Generations Choir (Nicole Becker, director); Gabrielle Barkididja, mezzo-soprano; and Bryan Murray, baritone. Visit www.naxos.com/CatalogueDetail/?id=8.579180. (2025-3-26)
- New Amsterdam Singers announces the retirement of Music Director Clara Longstreth — who founded the chorus in 1968 and has led the group for 57 seasons — at the end of the current concert season. Ben Arendsen will succeed Longstreth, effective with the 2025-2026 season, becoming only the second conductor to hold that post in the history of the chorus. For more details, visit www.nasingers.org/announcing-our-new-music-director/. (2025-2-6)
- Choral Chameleon has released its new album, Changing. Give a listen on YouTube. (2024-11-11)
- After many years at Yorktown Stage, the Taconic Opera has a new home--at the Tarrytown Music Hall. Read about the move at artswestchester.org/taconic-opera-makes-a-new-home-at-tarrytown-music-hall/. (2024-10-4)
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NEW ON VAN
The latest additions to the site's
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- February 25, 2025: New Choir Directory listing and Choir Auditions ad for The Heights Vocal Ensemble, based in Washington Heights.
- January 10, 2025: New Choir Directory listing and Choir Auditions ad for The Goldenrod Chorale, a new 55+ community choir in Hoboken, NJ.
- November 4, 2024: VAN milestone: just entered the 20,000th listing into our concert database that dates back to January 1998.
- October 10, 2024: New Choir Directory listing and Choir Auditions ad for the Liederkranz Chorus on the Upper East Side.
- September 30, 2024: Curious about how we prefer to format bits of information on the Vocal Area Network website? See our new VAN Style Guide.
- September 27, 2024: New link for Dorico, music notation software from Steinberg, recommended as a successor to Finale. New link for Schubertline, an online digital database of downloadable and printable art songs by major composers.
- September 6, 2024: We've combined the duplicate listings for the
Choir of the Church of St. Luke & St. Matthew in Brooklyn and
added a new Choir Directory listing for the The St. Luke & St. Matthew Choir School.
- August 23, 2024: New Choir Directory listing for Re:Soundings -- A Choral Music Project, a 16-voice professional ensemble directed by Stephen Sands focused on creating a new concert-going experience by dispersing singers throughout the performance space.
- August 20, 2024: New Choir Directory listing and Choir Auditions ad for the St. Luke's Episcopal Church Senior Choir in Montclair, NJ.
- July 30, 2024: We've resolved a coding issue with our VCS file generator so that downloading calendar listings (by clicking the "D" icon to the left of the listing) should now work reliably, even if the month of the event has only one digit.
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