Glee Club (3 of 3): Cambridge

About the Event: 

Saturday, March 16 - Cambridge

About the Glee Club:

From its earliest days as a group of thirteen men from the Class of 1863 to its current incarnation as an eighty-voice chorus of women and men, the Yale Glee Club, Yale’s principal undergraduate mixed chorus and oldest musical organization, has represented the best in collegiate choral music.

During its recent 150th anniversary season, the Glee Club’s performances 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 engineering, 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 choral music from the 16th century to the present, including Renaissance motets, contemporar ychoral works, world music, choral orchestra masterworks, spirituals and folk songs, and traditional Yale songs.

About Trinity College Choir:

Founded in 1546, the College choir has a long and illustrious history. Its mixed choir, comprising up to thirty choral scholars (who study a wide range of academic subjects) was formed by the present Organist and Director of Music, Richard Marlow, in 1982, a few years after the admission of women undergraduates to the College. The choristers' duties include singing four weekly services in Chapel during term-time and chanting Grace from the Minstrels' Gallery in Hall at College Feasts. At noon on the final Sunday of each academic year there is an outdoor concert of music for voices and brass performed antiphonally from the three gateway towers of the Great Court; later, at twilight, from punts moored at Trinity Backs, the choir sings the traditional River Concert that inaugurates May Week at Cambridge. Since it was established in 1982, the mixed choir has produced more than three dozen commercial recordings, enthusiastically received by critics and public alike. Annual radio transmissions for the BBC include Choral Evensong and special seasonal sequences such as the College's Epiphany Carol Service broadcast every January. BBC television has also recorded the choir, including a presentation of the Advent Carol Service.