Ehren Brown

Chanson éloignée

ehren — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 15:14:46 +0000

Ce soir mon cœur, fait chanter
des anges qui se souviennent
Une voix presque mienne,
par trop de silence tentée,
monte et se décide…
à ne plus revenir.
tendre et. intrépide, . ..
à quoi va-t-elle s’unir?

Ô chant éloigné, suprême lyre,
qui ne se donne qu’à celui qui ardenynent
et sans repos supporte et endure
de son effort le long et doux martyre
Ô chant qui naît le dernier pour conclure
l’enfance non terminée, le coeur d’antan.

Où je ne voulais que chanter,
il m’a été accordé
l’honneur de la vie…

Tonight my heart is singing
of angels who remember
A voice almost mine
tempted by too much silence,
rises and decides …
never to return.
tender and fearless …
what will she unite?

O distant song, Supreme lyre
which is given only to those who ardently
and without rest support and endure
along the and sweet martyrdom of its force.
Oh, the last song that is born to conclude
a childhood not completed, the heart of long ago.

When I just wanted to sing,
I have been granted
the honor of life …

A Mozart Festival

ehren — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 13:30:11 +0000

The Vernon Chorale is excited to invite you to A Mozart Festival on April 16, 2011 with full orchestra and guest artists the UConn Concert Choir. Tickets are available from any Chorale member or at the door.

A Mozart Festival
An all-Mozart program including the Requiem, Eine kleine Nachtmusik, and Vesperae Solennes de Confessore.
Ehren Brown and Michele Holt, conductors

Saturday, April 16, 2011 at 7:30pm
St. Bernard’s Catholic Church
25 St. Bernard’s Terrace
Rockville, CT 06066

ACDA Men’s Choir – Longest Time files

ehren — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 17:30:09 +0000

For those who would like to learn their parts by listening.

Thanks to 2011 ACDA Men’s Choir member Craig McAlister from Arkansas State University for creating these files!

And in case you need the PDF of the sheet music, here it is also:

The Longest Time

Stay Tuned For YouTube Symphony, The Sequel

ehren — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 13:53:41 +0000

Matthew Westwood | From:The Australian

American conductor Michael Tilson Thomas directs the New World Symphony Orchestra in Miami. His YouTube orchestra will perform in Sydney this month. Source: AP

LISTENING to classical music on the internet was for many years an awkward, even unpleasant experience. The sound was tinny and the music would lurch and sputter with digital drag: the curse of slow download times. Rock ‘n’ roll seemed a much better fit for this new medium, just as it found a natural partner in the 45rpm record in an earlier era.

Broadband and other innovations have helped bring opera and classical music online with much greater success, and downloads and live streaming of performances – whether it be an opera or a symphony – are more commonplace. Now comes the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, an attempt to build a symphony orchestra by recruiting musicians via the video-sharing website.

Its figurehead is the eminent US conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, who inaugurated the YouTube orchestra at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 2009. He will lead performances by the YTSO’s second incarnation at the Sydney Opera House this month.

Thomas, speaking by phone from Philadelphia after giving a concert there, says people are still getting into the habit of experiencing classical music online.

“It’s been a tremendous change as far as YouTube is concerned,” he says. “Only a few years ago, when I did the first project, I can’t tell you how many people in the classical-music world were saying, ‘Why on earth are you doing this?’ But nobody says that now.”

continue reading…

Whatever Happened To The Audiophile?

ehren — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 13:43:58 +0000

A VU Pioneer TX-9500 II. There are still people willing to drop a large chunk of their income on the best audio equipment available, says music professor Mark Katz. "That said," he adds, "the landscape — or perhaps soundscape — has changed."

by LINTON WEEKS

You may remember the type: Laid-back in an easy chair, soaking in Rachmaninoff, Reinhardt or the Rolling Stones, enveloped by the very best, primo, top-of-the-line stereo equipment an aficionado could afford.

In robot-like, 1980s cadence, the audiophile could rattle off favorite components, which might include an all-tube Premier One power amp by conrad-johnson, a Sota Sapphire turntable, an Ortofon MC-2000 cartridge and a pair of Magneplanar speakers.

Geeky? Mos def.

But the audiophile was a symbol of the Golden Age of Audiophonics, a time when certain people worshiped at the altar of expensive high-fidelity, two-channel stereo equipment. They were knights errant on an eternal quest for audio perfection — the exact replication of an original performance.

Here is the way one New York Times writer described a Holy Grail system in 1980: “There is a greater transparency of orchestral textures, giving each instrument an almost tactile presence.” The theological debates pitted vacuum-tube amplification advocates against those preferring solid state, or transistorized, amplification. The sacred texts were magazines such as Stereo Review andHigh Fidelity. Stereo stores were the holy shrines.

Then came the barbaric revolution. The boombox, the Walkman and other hand-held devices made music more portable. Digital sound enabled listeners to store scads of compressed, easy-to-download music files — first on computers, then on miniature devices and cell phones. Quality in recordings was sacrificed for speed and convenience. Loudness became more important than clarity. The richness and warmth of a recording was replaced by tinniness and splash.

Now it’s 2011. And amid all the earbudded iPods, smart phones and MP3 players, one can’t help but wonder: Whatever happened to the audiophile?

continue reading…

ACDA Men’s Honor Choir

ehren — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 20:03:38 +0000

From Peter Bagley, conductor of the 2011 ACDA Men’s Honor Choir:

Here is a schedule of our special guests who will have informal chats with the Men’s Honor Choir during the course of our rehearsals. All the rehearsals will be held in the Palmer House Hilton in the Monroe Room. All are welcome to attend!

We are extremely honored to have this distinguished roster of visitors who have indicated their delight for this to opportunity to connect with you. All of the visits take place 30 minutes before lunch or dinner break allowing limited extra time for personal Q/A! These chats will be very informal but hopefully provide an opportunity to share some of their lifetime experiences. Let’s call them mini interest sessions within the convention with their interest in what we do as male choristers, and what we need to do to make it better!

Thurs. March 10 @ 11:00am
Visit with Matt Oltman (Musical Director of Chanticleer) with Steven Sametz, composer of the ACDA Brock commission of a new choral work receiving the world premiere at the Wed. evening concert

Thurs. March 10 @ 8:30pm
Visit with Jason McCoy (composer/arranger of “Come Ye Thankful People, Come), receiving the world premiere of a commissioned arrangement at our Men’s Honor Choir concert

Fri., March 11 @11:00am
Visit with Alice Parker (co-arranger of “What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor”) and Dr. Ann Howard Jones (recipient of ACDA Robert Shaw Award) to talk about their collaborations with the late Maestro Robert Shaw

Friday, March 11 @ 2:30pm
Simon Carrington (co-founder of the King’s Singers.)

Friday, March 11 @ 4:30pm
Visit with Joseph Martin, composer of “The Awakening”

Dr. Peter Bagley
Special Assistant to the Dean
School of Fine Arts
University of Connecticut

Vaughan Williams’s Cambridge Mass world premiere

ehren — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 15:28:40 +0000

Alan Tongue conducted the premiere of A Cambridge Mass on 3 March 2011

A forgotten Vaughan Williams score will have its world premiere on Thursday.

A Cambridge Mass, written when the composer was a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, had been filed away in the University Library.

Conductor Alan Tongue discovered the piece in 2007 and spent the past year transcribing it.

Vaughan Williams was just 26 when he wrote the mass, but Mr Tongue said: “Every bar already had the hallmark of a great composer.”

The choral manuscript was submitted for his Doctor of Music examination in October 1899.

It lay undiscovered until the university held an exhibition of some of its 500,000 volumes of printed and manuscript music scores.

‘Very significant’Mr Tongue said he was amazed when he stumbled across the unknown work.

“There was a big sheet of Vaughan Williams – a work that I had clearly never seen before, and it looked so good I wanted to hear it,” he said.

“It had been mentioned in a few books but no one had ever bothered to take it out and try to perform it, which is extraordinary. It’s waited for 110 years.”

Vaughan Williams’s 45-minute work for four soloists, double chorus, orchestra and organ was given the title A Cambridge Mass by Mr Tongue. The composer had originally named only the individual movements.

“It’s very significant and is the earliest large-scale Vaughan Williams work that we have,” said Mr Tongue.

“And it’s a very positive, carefree, happy, optimistic piece composed just before his famous hymn-writing period and very unlike his later bleak period.”

Mr Tongue will conduct the first performance of A Cambridge Mass at Fairfield Halls in Croydon.

“As a conductor I take a lot of English music around the world and normally I’m introducing foreign audiences to the work of Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Holst and so on.

“This time I shall be introducing a work of Vaughan Williams to a British audience and that will give me a lot of pleasure,” he said.

“It’s not a student work at all. But let’s see what the reviewers and musical experts think of it.”

source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-12565842

BBC © MMXI The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.

UConn A Cappella Groups Recognized Among Nation’s Best

ehren — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 16:06:16 +0000

By: Colin Poitras
source: UConn Today

This story was first published on March 12, 2010.

This week, during Thanksgiving break, in addition to any breaking news about the University, we are revisiting some previous posts, including both well read favorites and some content that was first published when our site was still new. Daily news coverage and fresh features will resume Nov. 29. Happy Thanksgiving!

Members of the UConn a cappella group Conn Men rehearse in the Drama Building. Photo by Lauren Cunningham

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Hours of hard work, passion, and drive has paid off for two popular UConn a cappella groups that were recently recognized as being among the best college performance groups in the country by theContemporary A Cappella Society (CASA).

Songs by the Conn-Men and A Completely Different Note will be featured on CASA’s nationally distributed compilation CD, The Best of College A Cappella or BOCA 2010.

UConn was one of only three universities across the nation that had multiple winners this year; the others being Tufts and the University of Pennsylvania. Only 20 groups are selected for the BOCA showcase CD out of more than 2,000 active a cappella singing groups on more than 400 college campuses. The BOCA CD is produced by Varsity Vocals, a national organization dedicated to promoting a cappella at the college and high school level.

“It’s a great honor to be selected for such a highly-rated CD,” says John DePalma, a senior member of the Conn-Men. “If you sing in an a cappella group, you know what BOCA is. It was always in the back of our minds for one of our songs to be selected for BOCA. We never thought with thousands of songs submitted, ours would be one. It’s like winning the lottery!”

The Conn-Men’s unique version of Marc Broussard’s “Come Around” is featured on the BOCA CD. The song was arranged by Joseph Bates and features soloist Greg Nelson, a sophomore international business major from New Jersey.

This isn’t the first time the Conn-Men have received national notoriety. In December 2008, the group, with the help of the UConn Foundation, traveled to Washington, D.C., for three special performances. By request of Anita McBride, a UConn alumna and then-Chief of Staff to First Lady Laura Bush, the Conn-Men performed in the White House to help ring in the holidays. The group also traveled to Virginia to perform for music students at Yorktown High School and for the staff at the Music Educators National Conference Headquarters in Reston.

The group is currently finishing production work on its first studio album, Released.

Members of UConn's A Cappella group A Completely Different Note perform at 'Jingle Jam' in the Student Union Theatre on Dec. 3. Professional group Blue Jupiter and UConn student groups Shir Modulation, A Minor, The Chordials, and Extreme Measures also performed. Photo by Frank Dahlmeyer

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A Completely Different Note (CDN), formed in 1999, is the oldest all-male a cappella group at UConn. The group has put out several CDs, and their version of “Irish Lullaby” on the CD Mixed Nuts was nominated for a Contemporary A Cappella Recording Award (CARA) in 2009 in the category of “Best Barbershop Song.”

The group’s version of Tonic’s “Take Me As I Am,” which is the lead track on CDN’s latest CD Blazin’, is featured on the BOCA 2010 CD. The track was arranged by Nick Lyons and features soloist Joshua Blodgett, an English major from Massachusetts who graduated in August 2009.

“When the group first found out we were selected to be on the BOCA2010 CD, we were ecstatic,” group member Justin Beauchamp says. “It is such a prestigious honor and we are ever so grateful for being chosen.”

Beauchamp says the group prides itself on its diverse repertoire, which includes pop songs, country, rock, and choral pieces.

“We don’t always follow the status quo or perform songs that countless other groups do,” he says. “We take a chance and sing tunes that may not traditionally be done a cappella.”

Members of the UConn a cappella group the Conn Men discuss a song during rehearsal. Photo by Lauren Cunningham

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The Conn-Men also pride themselves on their work ethic, spending countless hours rehearsing a song to make sure it’s right before performing it at events or recording it on an album.

“Our work ethic and drive help separate us from the rest,” DePalma says. “Collectively, we have always felt we’ve had the talent to be a very good group, and we have been lucky enough to have excellent musicians to lead us. We’re all very close friends, but when it’s time to get down to business, we need no reminding.”

Since UConn’s a cappella experience began in 1998, eight groups have established themselves on campus. Some of the earliest groups included the all-female ensembles The Chordials and Rubyfruit. A Completely Different Note and the Conn-Men emerged along with several other groups over the years: A Minor – the University’s first co-ed group; Extreme Measures; The Rolling Tones; and most recently, the co-ed group Notes Over Storrs. Together, they make up the University’s A Cappella Association.

Music professor Robert Miller, faculty advisor to the Conn-Men, says the groups operate in a cooperative and supportive environment. They receive encouragement and support from the School of Fine Arts and are popular headliners at campus events.

“The a cappella scene here at UConn is extremely healthy,” Miller says. “Our established groups continue to perform at a very high level. New groups join them each year, and the number of students continues to grow. This growth has been encouraged by the excellent support and cooperation the singers have received from the Music Department, the School of Fine Arts, the UConn Foundation, and the University at large.

“The students benefit greatly from the help they receive,” Miller says. “In return, these ensembles are tremendous assets for the University and the state of Connecticut, performing each year in venues from local nursing homes to the White House. Quite a range.”

To order copies of the Contemporary A Cappella Society’s BOCA 2010 CD, go to the a-cappella.com website. To listen to a sample of the selected tunes on the CD, go to iTunes.

LISTEN:

“Come Around” performed by the Conn-Men

“Take Me As I Am” performed by A Completely Different Note

Great Music for Double Chorus

ehren — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 18:14:13 +0000

Join the combined forces of the Vernon Chorale and Hartford Chorale Chamber Singers as we present a concert featuring music for double and expanded chorus. Featuring the transcendent Howells Requiem for double chorus a cappella, the program will also include music by Eric Whitacre, Arvo Pärt, Felix Mendelssohn, and Johannes Brahms.

Saturday, April 17th at 7:30pm
Concordia Lutheran Church
40 Pitkin Street
Manchester, CT 06040

Sunday, April 18th at 4:00pm
Immanuel Congregational Church
10 Woodland Street
Hartford, CT 06105

VoiceBox – radio for singers

ehren — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:16:36 +0000

KALW in San Francisco has just started a new radio program called VoiceBox, airing on Friday nights from 10pm-11pm. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

“The show, produced by singer and arts journalist Chloe Veltman, will cover the vocal music scene in the Bay Area as well as national and international artists. The Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation recently supported the project with a $25,000 grant.

“I’m a longtime fan of Terry Gross and Michael Krasny,” said Veltman of her vision for the show. “My goal is to bring that same high level of intelligence and depth to my conversations with vocal musicians as they do with cultural figures, authors and filmmakers.”

For those of us who live far from San Francisco, you can listen to KALW’s live stream online at http://www.kalw.org/listen.html. Upcoming shows are described below, and you can find the show’s website at http://www.voicebox-media.org.

Hooray for Community Choruses, January 15, 2010 10pm KALW 91.7 FM
There are more than 500 choruses in the Bay Area and one in five Americans sings in a choir. Why are Americans so passionate about singing for pleasure?

Men with high voices, January 22, 2010 10pm KALW 91.7 FM
Once upon a time, countertenors wouldn’t go about publicizing the fact that they sang high. These days, male sopranos and altos are kings of the classical and pop worlds.

Mavens of Cabaret, January 29, 2010 10pm KALW, 91.7 FM
VoiceBox explores the vocal pyrotechnics of the smoothest cabaret artists from the Bay Area and beyond