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More News: > Choral Composition    Competition Winner > 25 Years of Change and    Development > And They Can Sing,    Too! > Buy Early for Ticket    Deals > Concert Posters

Starting our Second Quarter Century

After a gala year of concerts and celebrations to mark Cantemus' first 25 years, we're ready to launch our next 25!

We're back to our more customary schedule, with concerts in December and May, and this year we'll hold our Best of the Best High School Chorus Festival in the Spring.

Richard Given

Mark your calendar for December 6 and 7, when we will welcome 4 outstanding brass instrumentalists to accompany the chorus when "Cantemus meets Morgenmusik." Morgenmusik is a Boston area brass ensemble with a "rotating" membership. Our December "band" will include Phil Swanson on trombone; you may remember Phil from our "Voices of Jazz: Cantemus Swings!" concerts last March. Joining him will be Tom Duprey and Richard Watson on trumpet, and Brian Kay on trombone.

Phil Swanson

The program will include Daniel Pinkham's Christmas Cantata, works by Pachelbel, Schutz, Mendelssohn, Bruckner, and more. The Pinkham and Pachelbel are choral works with brass quartet. Cantemus accompanist Frances Burmeister will perform a work for organ and brass quartet, and the brass will play a few works.

On May 2 and 3, we will perform a tribute to what we love to do — make music with our voices! "O Music, Sweet Music: Celebrating Music in Song" will draw from the large repertoire of stunning choral works about music. Joining us for these concerts will be Margaret Herlehy, oboe, who accompanied our "American Treasures" concerts in May 2005. We will repeat several of the haunting pieces we performed with her then, as well as new ones.

Please join us in December AND May!

Choral Composition Competition Winner Announced

To mark the occasion of our 25th season, Cantemus held its second Choral Composition Competition, open to all students enrolled in a New England college or university. We announced the winner at our May 17 gala concert: "Veni Sancte Spiritus," composed by Javier F. Marquez, who was a senior at Salem State. Cantemus will premiere the work at our May concerts.

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

25 Years of Change and Development

Cantemus 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:

Marcia B. Siegel (alto) writes on dance for the Boston Phoenix and the Hudson Review. She has published six books, most recently the critical study Howling Near Heaven - Twyla Tharp and the Re-invention of Modern Dance. A new collection of Siegel's reviews and essays, Mirrors and Scrims - The Life and Afterlife of Ballet, will be published in 2009 by Wesleyan University Press.

Pat Lowery Collins (alto), author and artist, welcomed the publication of a sequel to her seminal picture book, I Am An Artist, in spring of 2008. Titled I Am A Dancer, this picture book illustrated by Mark Graham, takes a look at the process of dance as found in the natural movements of children. A historical young adult novel, Hidden Voices, The Orphan Musicians of Venice, is forthcoming from Candlewick Press, a division of Random House, in spring of 2009. A second novel (her fifth), Feather and Shell, set in Essex, MA in 1849, is scheduled for release in 2010. In fine arts, she is still working on a series called Of Time and Tides. New work from it has recently been shown at The Northshore Arts Association. She is also a member of the core faculty of Lesley’s University’s low residency graduate program in creative writing.

Alto Dorothy Monnelly's book, The Great Marsh – Between Land and Sea, was published in 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 rendered dramatically in 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, Benham Gallery in Seattle, Camera Obscura in Denver and Panopticon 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.

Download Concert Posters

Download concert posters to enjoy at home or send to friends. Posters are provided in PDF format. You may need to install Adobe Reader® to view them.

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.

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