About |
CHORUS ANGELICUS (The Angelic Choir)
Chorus Angelicus is comprised of four choral ensembles, involving more than seventy children who hail from towns throughout southwestern New England. The Artistic Director is Grammy-nominated composer and conductor, Nicholas White, and the choirs are in residence at Trinity Episcopal Church in Torrington, CT. The choruses perform a large and varied repertoire, from the classics of choral literature to contemporary and original compositions. There is a strong emphasis placed on musical education, as well as performance, for all the age groups and ability levels. The youngest singers enter through the Training Choir and Advanced Training Choir (Karen Sovak, Director), and progress through the Junior Choir (Julie Bickford, Director), with the ultimate goal of joining the Senior Choir. Each group maintains an increasingly demanding rehearsal and performance schedule, and each plays its part in the organization producing more than 25 concerts each year. Recent engagements for Chorus Angelicus have included concerts at Music Mountain (Lakeville, CT), Infinity Hall (Norfolk, CT), and a tour to Cape Cod. In conjunction with the adult choir, Gaudeamus, programs featuring Brahms' A German Requiem, Finzi's Lo, the full final sacrifice, David Briggs' Requiem (CT Premiere) and the Magnificat, Missa Brevis and In Sure And Certain Hope by Nicholas White have been presented to enthusiastic audiences throughout Connecticut. The annual presentation of Christmas Angelicus continues to be an audience favorite, with concerts given in many local churches and chapels during the month of December.
GAUDEAMUS ( Let us rejoice)
Gaudeamus is an adult chamber choir of professional and semi-professional free lance singers formed in 1992, and directed by Nicholas White. This choir performs in conjunction with Chorus Angelicus, providing the alto, tenor and bass parts, and giving the younger choristers the opportunity to experience singing such masterworks as Bach’s St. John Passion and Mass in B Minor, Handel’s Dixit Dominus, Britten’s Saint Nicholas, and Schnittke’s Requiem. In recent years, programs featuring Brahms' A German Requiem, Finzi's Lo, the full final sacrifice, David Briggs' Requiem (CT Premiere) and the Magnificat, Missa Brevis and In Sure And Certain Hope by Nicholas White have been presented to enthusiastic audiences throughout Connecticut. Gaudeamus also performs alone, without Chorus Angelicus, and has recently presented works as diverse as Monteverdi's Missa Brevis, Bach's Jesu, meine Freude, Herbert Howells' Requiem, Benjamin Britten's Rejoice In The Lamb and the Connecticut Premiere of Nicholas White's The Aim Was Song. Gaudeamus is also know for its exploration of world choral music with instrumentalists from all over the world, and is featured with folk legend Pete Seeger on his Grammy Award-winning CD, Pete. More recently, the group was invited by SONY/Pioneer to record an album of a capella masterworks to demonstrate the newest surround-sound technology. Entitled Sacred Feast, this DMP release has won high praise from Billboard Magazine, Pro Audio Magazine, and high-end audiophiles the world over.