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Review: Choir of Clare College, Cambridge in concert at Fairmount Presbyterian Church (December 14)

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by Nicholas Jones

Clare-College-ChoirIt is one of the joys of the holiday season that choral music rings all about us. Clevelanders have a banquet of our own choral groups to enjoy, but it is an added pleasure to hear an accomplished choir from England, where the choral tradition is so deeply established.

A goodly crowd turned out at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights on a very snowy Saturday evening to hear the choir of Clare College, one of the 31 colleges of the University of Cambridge (indeed, the second oldest of those colleges, established in the early 14th century). The choir, some 25-strong, warmed the church and the audience with its accomplished and vigorous musicality.

[Read more…]

CD Review: Choir of Clare College, Cambridge — Veni Emmanuel: Music for Advent

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by Daniel Hathaway

Clare-College-Choir-VeniIf the commercial frenzy of Christmas and its wall-to-wall musical onslaught already has your ears ringing with fatigue, there’s a wonderful antidote close at hand: the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge and its new CD, Veni Emmanuel: Music for Advent (Harmonia Mundi). The ensemble stops at Fairmount Presbyterian Church this Saturday evening to sing the last concert of its seven-city U.S. tour, a program taken from the CD, and there will certainly be copies for sale that night.

Don’t miss the opportunity to pick one up and play it frequently between now and December 24 and beyond — it’s a superb collection of music brilliantly conceived and wonderfully performed by the 30-voice ensemble of women and men, formed in 1971 under John Rutter and now directed by Graham Ross (Rutter still has a hand in the choir’s activities, having served as sessions producer, recording engineer and editor for the album, which was recorded at All Hallows Church, Gospel Oak in North London and at St. Alban’s Abbey in March and April of 2012.) [Read more…]

Preview: Clare College Cambridge Choir at Fairmount — a conversation with director Graham Ross

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by Mike Telin

Clare-College-Choir“The English choral tradition is known the world over and if you go to places like Westminster Abbey in London or King’s College right next to me here in Cambridge, they’re continuing a tradition that has been going on for many hundreds of years,” Graham Ross, Director of Music and Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge told us via Skype — and the tradition he is referring to is the all male choir of boys and men. Clare College Choir continues that long musical history but with an ensemble of women and men.

On Saturday, December 14 beginning at 7:30 pm in Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights, Graham Ross will lead a program entitled Veni Emmanuel: Music for Advent. The program includes Ramsey’s O Sapientia, Howells’s The fear of the Lord & A Spotless Rose, Byrd’s Vigilate, Shepphard’s Audivi vocem de caelo, Britten’s Hymn to the Virgin, Pärt’s O Morgenstern, Warlock’s Bethlehem Down & the recently-departed John Tavener’s God is with us. The Cleveland performance is the last stop on the choir’s seven-concert U.S. tour and brings one native Clevelander — Clare undergraduate soprano Gabriella Haigh — back to town for Christmas.

Since its founding as a mixed voice choir, the Choir of Clare College has gained an international reputation as one of the leading university choral groups in the world. [Read more…]

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