H+H Announces The 30th Annual Collaborative Youth Concerts

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Handel and Haydn Society Announces

The 30th Annual Collaborative Youth Concerts

Featuring 430 Students from 7 Public High Schools

To Perform with the H+H Orchestra and Vocal Quartet

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Led by Guest Conductor Andrew Clark

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[Boston, MA – February 3, 2017]  The Handel and Haydn Society announces the 30th anniversary of its annual Collaborative Youth Concerts, which unite public high school choruses from across eastern Massachusetts to rehearse and perform classical and Baroque repertoire in their home communities with the Handel and Haydn Society Orchestra and Vocal Quartet. The concerts are led by guest conductor Andrew Clark, and include 430 high school students from seven high schools. In addition to the three concerts performed at high schools in February, the combined youth choruses will open H+H’s McGegan and Mozart concert, March 3 and 5 at Boston’s historic Symphony Hall. This year, two new schools join the CYC – Wellesley High School and Silver Lake Regional High School in Kingston, MA.

 

    

Student chorus performers                                    Guest conductor Andrew Clark

H+H’s first Collaborative Youth Concert was in 1987 with Jeffrey Rink conducting at Boston’s Faneuil Hall. Over the years, H+H has produced over 70 CYC concerts including participation of over 25 schools. “Through the CYC,” shares H+H VP of Education and Community Engagement Emily Yoder Reed, “students get to perform both with professional musicians and with peers from other communities, who they otherwise might not meet.” CYC students and their families enjoy complimentary tickets to the concerts. The concert program features works by Henry Purcell (1659-1695) and the H+H Vocal Quartet will sing with the students and features Jacqueline Stucker (soprano), Emily Harmon (mezzo soprano), Christian Figueroa (tenor), and RaShaun Campbell (baritone).

Thursday, February 9, 10:30am at Boston Latin School

78 Avenue Louis Pasteur, Boston, MA 02115

Featuring choruses from Boston Latin School (Ryan Snyder, director)

and Wellesley High School (Kevin McDonald, director)

Tuesday, February 14, 10:30am at Brockton High School

470 Forest Avenue, Brockton, MA 02301

Featuring choruses from Brockton High School (Matthew Cunningham, director)

and Silver Lake Regional High School (Kelley DePasqua, director), Kingston

Thursday, February 16, 10:30am at Lawrence High School for the Performing Arts

70 N. Parish Road, Lawrence, MA 01843

Featuring choruses from Lynn English High School (Jorge Ibanez, director)

Lynn Classical High School (Emily Northridge, director)

and Lawrence High School for the Performing Arts (Nancy McGhee, director)

Friday, March 3, 7:30pm and Sunday, March 5, 3pm at Symphony Hall

301 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, MA 02115

Opening for H+H’s McGegan and Mozart Concert

 

“Handel and Haydn Society continues its trailblazing work in providing access to the arts through its highly-recognized engagement programs,” explains director Andrew Clark. “I know of no other program in the country where a world-class period orchestra not only performs in and for a school, but with the students themselves. The Collaborative Youth Concerts provide hundreds of students with the transformational experience of performing great music with professional artists, cultivating the next generation of performers, audience members, and arts advocates.”

“H+H provides my students the priceless opportunity,” says Nancy McGhee, choral director

of Lawrence High School for the Performing Arts, “to experience an entire world outside of Lawrence that loves, appreciates, and supports classical music, especially choral singing and performance. They are not alone.”

Matthew Cunningham, now serving as choral director for Brockton Public Schools was himself a participant at Brockton High School when he was a student. “I have the fondest memories of singing with Handel and Haydn Society throughout high school,” shares Cunningham. “The Collaborative Youth Concert was always the highlight of my year because we were challenged to learn difficult music, and also able to enjoy the fruitful rewards of our hard work in the spectacular performance. I am thankful that this opportunity still exists for students.”

 

This year’s CYC concerts are funded in part by local cultural councils in Kingston, Lynn, Lawrence, Brockton, and Boston, as well as the Abbot and Dorothy Stevens Foundation.

Click here to view the Greater Boston tv segment on H+H’s Collaborative Youth Concerts:

https://handelandhaydn.org/education/for-schools/collaborative-youth-concerts/

 

About Guest Conductor Andrew Clark

Andrew Clark is the Director at Choral Activities and Senior Lecturer on Music at Harvard University. He serves as the Music Director and Conductor of the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, the Harvard Glee Club, the Radcliffe Choral Society, the Harvard Summer Chorus, and teaches courses in conducting, choral literature, and music and disability studies in the Department of Music. Since arriving at Harvard in 2010, Dr. Clark has conducted the Harvard Glee Club in performances at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center, and the Radcliffe Choral Society won the Grand Prize and two Gold prizes at the International Competition for Chamber Choirs at Petrinja, Croatia in 2012. His performances with Collegium of Handel’s Israel in Egypt, Messiah, and Rachmaninoff ’s Vespers received critical acclaim, as did their recent debut with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project performing Arvo Pärt’s St. John Passion and Tigran Mansurian’s Requiem in Jordan Hall. Clark has organized Harvard residencies with distinguished conductors, composers, and ensembles, including Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Harry Christophers, Craig Hella Johnson, and Maria Guinand. He has commissioned numerous composers and conducted important contemporary and rarely heard pieces as well as regular performances of choral-orchestral masterworks. His choirs have been hailed as “first rate” (The Boston Globe), “cohesive and exciting” (Opera News), “beautifully blended” (Providence Journal), and achieving performances of “passion, conviction, adrenalin, [and] coherence” (Worcester Telegram). He has collaborated with the National Symphony, the Pittsburgh and New Haven Symphonies, the Boston Pops, the Rhode Island Philharmonic, the Boston Philharmonic, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, among others. Prior to his appointment at Harvard, Clark was Artistic Director of the Providence Singers, and served as Director of Choral Activities at Tufts University for seven years. He previously held conducting posts with the Worcester Chorus, Opera Boston, and Clark University. Clark currently serves as a founding faculty member of the Notes from the Heart music program near Pittsburgh, a summer camp for children and young adults experiencing disabilities and chronic illness. He earned degrees from Wake Forest, Carnegie Mellon, and Boston Universities, studying with Ann Howard Jones, David Hoose, and the late Robert Page. He lives in Medford, MA, with his wife Amy Peters Clark, and their daughters, Amelia Grace and Eliza Jane.

About Harry Christophers, Artistic Director

The 2016-2017 season marks Harry Christophers’ eighth as Artistic Director of the Handel and Haydn Society. Since his appointment in 2009, Christophers and H+H have embarked on an ambitious artistic journey toward the organization’s 200th anniversary with a showcase of works premiered in the U.S. by H+H since 1815, broad education programming, community outreach activities and partnerships, and the release of a series of recordings on the CORO label. Christophers is known internationally as founder and conductor of the UK-based choir and period-instrument ensemble The Sixteen. He has directed The Sixteen throughout Europe, America, Australia, and the Far East, gaining a distinguished reputation for his work in Renaissance, Baroque, and 20th- and 21st-century music. In 2000, he instituted The Choral Pilgrimage, a tour of British cathedrals from York to Canterbury. He has recorded over 120 titles for which he has won numerous awards, including the coveted Gramophone Award for Early Music and the prestigious Classical Brit Award in 2005 for his disc Renaissance. His CD IKON was nominated for a 2007 Grammy and his second recording of Handel’s Messiah on The Sixteen’s own label CORO won the prestigious MIDEM Classical Award 2009. In 2009, he received one of classical music’s highest accolades, the Classic FM Gramophone Awards Artist of the Year Award, and The Sixteen won the Baroque Vocal Award for Handel Coronation Anthems, a recording that also received a 2010 Grammy Award nomination as did Palestrina, Vol. 3 in 2014. From 2007, he has featured with The Sixteen in the highly successful BBC television series Sacred Music, presented by actor Simon Russell Beale. The latest hour-long program, devoted to Monteverdi’s Vespers, will be screened in 2015. Harry Christophers is Principal guest conductor of the Granada Symphony Orchestra and a regular guest conductor with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. In October 2008, Christophers was awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Music from the University of Leicester. He is an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford , of the Royal Welsh Academy for Music and Drama, and was awarded a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2012 Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

 

About the H+H Orchestra and Chorus

http://handelandhaydn.org/about/period-instrument-orchestra-and-chorus/

About David Snead, President and CEO

David Snead joined H+H as as President and CEO in October 2015 after serving as Vice President of Marketing, Brand and Customer Experience at the New York Philharmonic a role he held since 2001. Previously, he led the marketing programs of the Pittsburgh Symphony, Guthrie Theater, Milwaukee Symphony, and Hartford Symphony. He has also served as Associate Marketing Director of the Minnesota Orchestra, General Manager of the Richmond Symphony, and Executive Director of the Eastern Connecticut Symphony. Snead is on the faculty of the League of American Orchestras’ Patron Model seminars, and is a regular lecturer at New York University and Drexel. A noted expert on the relationship between orchestras and their audiences, he has been a featured speaker at national conferences in the United States, England, France, Finland, the Netherlands, and Australia.

H+H 2016-2017 Season Continues…

Glories of the Italian Baroque NEC’s Jordan Hall February 10 + 12, 2017

Aisslinn Nosky, director and violin

McGegan and Mozart Symphony Hall March 3 + 5, 2017

Nicholas McGegan, conductor

Monteverdi Vespers NEC’s Jordan Hall April 7, 2017

Harry Christophers, conductor The Met Museum April 8, 2017 (New York)

Sanders Theatre April 9, 2017

Handel Semele Symphony Hall May 5 + 7, 2017

Harry Christophers, conductor

 

About the Handel and Haydn Society

The Handel and Haydn Society is internationally acclaimed for its performances of Baroque and Classical music. Based in Boston, H+H’s Orchestra and Chorus delight more than 50,000 listeners each year with a nine concert subscription series at Symphony Hall and other leading venues in addition to a robust program of intimate events in museums, schools, and community centers. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Harry Christophers, the ensemble embraces historically informed performance bringing classical music to life with the same immediacy it had the day it was written. Through the Karen S. and George D. Levy Education Program, H+H also provides engaging, accessible, and broadly inclusive music education to over 10,000 children each year through in-school music instruction and a Vocal Arts Program that includes six youth choruses.

Founded in Boston in 1815, H+H is the oldest continuously-performing arts organization in the United States, and is unique among American ensembles for its longevity, capacity for reinvention, and distinguished history of premieres. H+H began as a choral society founded by middle-class Bostonians who aspired to improve the quality of singing in their growing American city. They named the organization after two composers—Handel and Haydn—to represent both the old music of the 18th century and what was then the new music of the 19th century. In the first decades of its existence, H+H gave the American premieres of Handel’s Messiah (1818), Haydn’s Creation (1819), Verdi’s Requiem (1878), and Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (1879). Between 2014 and 2016, H+H celebrated its Bicentennial with two seasons of special concerts and initiatives to mark 200 years of music making. Since its founding, H+H has given more than 2,000 performances before a total audience exceeding 2.8 million.

In addition to its subscription series, tours, and broadcast performances, H+H reaches a worldwide audience through ambitious recordings including Haydn Symphonies, the critically-acclaimed Haydn: The Creation, the best-selling Joy to the World: An American Christmas, and Handel Messiah, recorded live at Symphony Hall under Christophers’ direction. http://handelandhaydn.org/

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