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Has It Really Been 25 Years?

Cantemus is eagerly planning ahead to celebrate a quarter century of music making during our 25th Anniversary Season, 2007-2008. An anniversary committee has already met to discuss preliminary ideas for a season that will offer wonderful experiences of music – old favorites from the sacred and secular, new compositions, reunions with old friends, and ways for our audiences to share in the celebrations. We know you’ll want to be part of Cantemus’s exciting Anniversary experience, so we promise to keep you updated as plans take shape.

Hear High School Choristers at Cantemus’s “Best of the Best”

As this issue was headed to press, plans were underway for Cantemus’s high school choral festival, “Best of the Best,” scheduled for 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, November 15 (location to be announced). For each Best of the Best program, Cantemus invites high school choruses and their directors to join together for an evening of sharing their work. (Picture a high school sports demonstration, but the crowd is cheering not for the teams, but for the choruses!) It’s always a high-energy, enthusiastic evening of collaborative music making by our region’s young singers. And, of course, Cantemus contributes a work or two as well.

Watch the Cantemus Web site (www.cantemus.org) for the Best of the Best location and details about which schools are participating this year.

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.

How Choral Music Has Changed Our Lives

Although some Cantemus singers employ music as part of their professional lives, we all (professional musicians or not) sing for the love of it, a love that often took root and sprouted very early in our lives. We thought it would be fun to ask our singers to share how their involvement in choral music, early on and as adults, has affected their lives. Here’s what one member had to say:

Susan Nash, soprano 2
How she started singing: During my piano lessons, I kept singing the melodies, so my teacher told me to shut up and join his church choir.
Lessons learned: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
What life skills she brings to choral music: I’ve been a professional editor, so I have an over-developed eye for detail – and effective choral singing that moves the audience happens when we get all the details right. That takes a lot of work, but it’s a challenge we all rise to because it’s what makes choral singing so wonderful for us, and for our fans.

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-by-Mail, c/o 18 Turkey Shore Rd., Ipswich, MA 01938. Orders must be received by November 21, 2006; 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, Ipswich Shellfish Fish Market, 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.

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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.

Plan now to join us in May for
Songs of Love – Requited and Not Quite
Saturday, May 5, 2007 at 7:30 PM
Sunday, May 6, 2007 at 4:00 PM