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“Game On!” — a night of game-show fun with the Singers’ Club 

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by Max Newman

“I am fairly certain that in the 131 years of the Singers’ Club, this will be our first event with an interactive audience element.”

What Don Verkuijlen is referring to is the “Game On!” program that the Singers’ Club of Cleveland will present on Friday, April 26 at 7:00 pm at First Baptist Church of Greater Cleveland. Tickets are available here.

The brainchild of Verkuijlen, the program is “essentially going to be played like a game of Jeopardy,” he said during a telephone conversation. “When you walk in, there will be a big screen showing various categories. The audience will raise their hands and call out a category, and instead of video clues, the choir will actually be singing a piece of music for each category.”

[Read more…]

Singers Club of Cleveland to take its spring program on tour to the Baltics

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by Daniel Hathaway

One of Northeast Ohio’s oldest continuing ensembles, The Singers Club of Cleveland, made its debut in the chapel of First Baptist Church on April 19, 1894.

The all-male chorus, which had tallied up 1,663 members by the time its entry in The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History was written in 1995, will return to First Baptist Church for a spring concert on Friday, April 28 at 7 pm  — not to the edifice where the chorus sang its first concert, but to its new Gothic building designed by Walker and Weeks and dedicated in 1929.

Friday’s concert will also set the distinguished ensemble off on a new course. Having stayed close to home for over a century, the Singers Club will embark on a week-long tour of Latvia, Estonia, and Finland in June.

“We’re going to be there during the Summer Solstice, which is a huge celebration in the Baltics,” music director Don Verkuilen said in a telephone conversation. [Read more…]

Singers’ Club appoints new artistic director

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The Singers’ Club of Cleveland has named local conductor and musician Don VerKuilen as its new artistic director, effective June 1.

VerKuilen is the Director of Music and Liturgy at Saint Rocco Parish on Cleveland’s West Side, where he serves as organist and directs all choirs, including a schola cantorum he has created for the return of the Latin Mass.

VerKuilen has directed choirs across the United States as guest conductor and has held choral directing positions in prominent churches, including Pulaski Heights Methodist in Little Rock, Arkansas, and The Old Stone Church, Cleveland. He has performed as concert organist across the United States and Europe. VerKuilen began his organ and conducting studies at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and is continuing those studies at The Cleveland Institute of Music.

[Read more…]

Singers’ Club Mather Competition: a conversation with Sherrill Milnes

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by Daniel Hathaway

Following the Singers’ Club of Cleveland’s 29th Annual S. Livingston Mather Scholarship Competition for Male Voice Students on November 3, veteran Metropolitan Opera baritone Sherrill Milnes will give a free, public master class for the five winners on Sunday, November 4 at 1:00 pm in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

With over 650 Met performances to his credit — he and the late Montserrat Caballé both made their house debuts in Gounod’s Faust on December 22, 1965 — Milnes continues to be a popular mentor for young singers. Together with his wife, Maria Zouves, he co-founded and runs the Sherrill Milnes VOICE Programs: VOICExperience Foundation and the Savannah VOICE Festival, which “provide training for aspiring young artists while fostering new audiences for the arts.”

I reached Sherrill Milnes by telephone only a day or so after he returned from a trip to China. [Read more…]

Singers’ Club turns nostalgic in
“The Way We Were” this weekend

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by Daniel Hathaway

Singers Club SquareWhen you’re 125 years old, you have lots of memories to share. Institutionally speaking, the Singers’ Club of Cleveland has reached that elevated station of life this season, and it’s time to reminisce. The chorus will do just that on Saturday, March 10 at 7:30 pm in its next concert at the Breen Center at St. Ignatius High School in Ohio City.

“We’ve already programmed an old-fashioned Christmas,” artistic director Natalie Mallis said in a telephone conversation, “and now we’re going to give a concert titled ‘The Way We Were,’ with the Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford movie in mind. We’ll give the audience a look at what we’ve done over the years through footage of our performances, and sing songs from movies all the way back to the advent of the talkies and all the way forward to the music of John Williams. We’ll even project baby pictures of our current members.”

The all-male chorus is one of Cleveland’s oldest performing organizations, having been formed at the request of the Cleveland YMCA in November of 1891. [Read more…]

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