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Three Down, One to Go

What a year of celebration it has been for Cantemus Chamber Chorus! The year was off to an exciting start with our donation of a new piano to the Miles River Middle School where we rehearse each week. Our hope is that this instrument will benefit future musicians in Hamilton and Wenham. It certainly helps at our rehearsals.

In November we performed a program entitled “Epitaph: Music For Remembrance and Celebration.” The concert included 2 guest percussionists and the Shuman “Carols of Death” were a particular challenge and stretch for the chorus.

In December we did 2 FREE family holiday concerts to give our audiences a chance to engage in singing some of the great carols of the season as well as listen to Cantemus perform several selections on our own.

Mid March brought something entirely new for us – vocal jazz accompanied by a fabulous sextet. Music Director Gary Wood performed one of his own pieces, the chorus showed off our “swinging” style with arrangements of 8 favorites, and the sextet did 6 pieces on their own as well as accompanying the chorus. It was a real blend of talents and great fun for us to try something new in terms of style. Our venues were new as well, Pingree School and Governor’s Academy.

And now we are in rehearsal for our Anniversary Gala concert on May 17th at Christ Church in Hamilton. Many former singers are returning for the evening as well as 5 former conductors.. The program will consist of favorite pieces out of our library that have been sung over the last 25 years. In addition we have commissioned a piece for this concert called “A Millay Set”, by Robert Ruplenas, our second conductor.

While all of this music has been going on, entries for our Composition Competition have been rolling in from students at New England colleges and we will announce the winner at the May concert, to be performed next year.

It has been a year full of hard but rewarding work. We thank New England Biolabs for their generous support and all our other contributors who have made our exciting 25th anniversary possible.

We hope to see you in May!

Deb Twining
President

2007-2008: Our Silver Anniversary Season

It's hard to believe that it's been 25 years since Cantemus began making beautiful music on the north shore of Massachusetts. But it was way back in 1982 that a small group of singers gathered for the first time under the musical leadership of Edward Lundergan, a talented young man from Salem. At a crossroads in his musical career, he had shared his dream to start a select chamber choir dedicated to exploring the literature written for smaller choruses with Donna Gale, one of the founding members of Cantemus. With Edward's dream and Donna's help and encouragement, Cantemus -- with 12 auditioned singers -- was born.

Cantemus Sponsors a Choral Composition Competition

To mark the occasion of our 25th anniversary, Cantemus will hold a composition competition open to all students currently enrolled in a New England college or university at the undergraduate or graduate level. A panel of prominent and qualified choral conductors and composers will judge the entries and award to the winner a prize of $1,500. All submission packets must be postmarked by March 31, 2008. The winner will be announced at our Spring Concert in May of 2008, and we will premiere the winning submission in our 2008-2009 Season. The winner will be invited to hear his or her composition performed in concert, and will be given an archival recording of the performance. Please contact Jamie Cabot at 978-468-1636 with questions.

This project is supported in part by an Alfred Nash Patterson Grant from Choral Arts New England.

Download contest guidelines and application form [pdf]

25 Years of Change and Development

The group sang mostly madrigals back then and traded singing in church services for rehearsal space. In the years since, our music directors have changed as their life circumstances have changed, and our membership has grown so that we now have up to 40 singers among our ranks. But, as in the beginning, we are required to audition each year for admission into the group. The additional voices give us stability and the ability to perform more works.

From the casual group we started as, we’ve grown to have an energetic and dedicated board of directors, and operate on a budget that far exceeds our humble beginnings. We have a loyal audience and continually strive to entice new listeners to our concerts; we frequently receive funding from cultural grants-awarding entities; we enjoy support from individual donors and our own membership; and we earn a significant percentage of our operating revenue from our own ticket sales. Our level of professionalism has grown considerably – we’re a tightly run, more involved group, and we have earned a respected position in the music community.

And They Can Sing, Too!

While several Cantemus singers do make their living in positions related to music, others make their mark in other areas of the arts. Some recent notable examples:

This summer, Marcia Siegel (alto) celebrated the publication of her book Howling Near Heaven –Twyla Tharp and the Reinvention of Modern Dance (St. Martin’s Press) with readings and signings in Boston, Cambridge, Jacob’s Pillow, Concord, and the Rockport Public Library. She lectured on Tharp at the New York Public Library of the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center in October. Also the author of Days on Earth, a 1988 biography of modern dance pioneer Doris Humphrey, Marcia participated in a two-day Humphrey symposium at Windhover Dance Center in August. She appeared with choreographer Lucinda Childs, under the sponsorship of the Philadelphia Dance Advance, to discuss Childs’s forthcoming documentary film. Marcia begins her eleventh year as dance critic for the Boston Phoenix this fall.

Pat Lowery Collins (alto), author and artist, has had her most recent successes in the area of fine arts. Pat had work in a show this fall called Summer Solstice II at The Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. She also recently had two pieces in a small exhibit called “A Room of One’s Own” that opened in concert with “The Secret of Mme. Bonnard’s Bath” by Israel Horowitz at the Gloucester Stage Company. And this fall, her work “Of Time and Tides” (which won the J. Tweed Hill & Josephine Petrus Memorial Award) was shown at Exhibition III at Northshore Arts Association. Pat was also invited to participate in “Find Your Place: The Art of Essex County” sponsored by The Trustees of Reservations this October.

Dorothy Monnelly (alto) is eagerly awaiting the publication of her book The Great Marsh – Between Land and Sea, scheduled for release Feb. 1, 2007 by George Braziller Publishers, NY. Dorothy is well-known as an award-winning fine art photographer. In this collection of 57 large-format, black and white photographs, the salt marsh is a solemn force rendered dramatically with crisp scans of her original gelatin silver prints. Her work is described in the forward by Jeanne Adams, director of the Ansel Adams Trust, as capturing the marsh’s “amazing sculptural quality.” Dorothy’s work is in the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC, and has been exhibited at The Edward Carter Gallery in NYC, The Ralls Collection in DC, Arden Gallery in Boston as well as in Maine, California and Hawaii.

Gary Freeman (tenor) is a regular contributor to Goldberg, a Spanish publication dedicated to world-wide early music. Every other month he includes two articles on early music concerts and events in North America. Published in three languages and distributed worldwide, Goldberg is a semi-scholarly journal that competes with the publication Early Music America in the US. For his Goldberg submissions, Gary interviews some of the most remarkable singers and instrumentalists of our time. In addition, Gary reviews books for The Living Church, published in Milwaukee, WI, and Episcopal Life, published in New York. The Living Church has pegged Gary as an expert on Medieval monks and monastery architecture, Medieval and contemporary, and Episcopal Life asks Gary to review more controversial subjects, such as war and the Christian conscience. 

Buy Early for Ticket Deals

Everyone loves a bargain, so be sure to take advantage of discounted advance ticket pricing for our May concerts. To receive advance tickets by mail, simply mail your ticket request and check (made out to “Cantemus”) to Cantemus Tickets, c/o 18 Turkey Shore Rd., Ipswich, MA 01938. Orders must be received at least one week prior to the concert date; late-request tickets will be held at the door. Tickets by mail are sold at the advanced-price rate of $18 (adults) and $15 (seniors). And don’t forget that students aged 21 and under are always admitted free to our concerts!

Please also visit our ticket outlets for discounted tickets: The Book Shop in Beverly Farms, Nazir’s Fine Jewelry in Wenham, River Gallery in Ipswich, and The Newburyport Printmaker.

There are so many ways to save while hearing Cantemus’ “Small Chorus, Grand Sound!” We can accept one discount per ticket purchase.

Visit our Tickets page for more information.

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Order a CD

Ranging from traditional carols to international music of the season to a complete performance of Benjamin Britten’s masterful "Ceremony of Carols" for treble voices and harp, our debut CD presents the listener with a sampling of our most spirited seasonal pieces.

"Joy Shall Be Yours" is available for purchase at all of our concerts as well as at the River Gallery in Ipswich.

To purchase "Joy Shall Be Yours" by mail, please send a check or money order for $8 per CD, or 2 for $15, plus $2.50 shipping and handling, payable to Cantemus, P.O. Box 784, Ipswich, MA 01938. There are just a few left, so order yours today.