A Note
from the Director
Greetings from Ensemble Companio! We are hard at work preparing this season's concert program, America Singing, and are excited to announce concerts in March, April, and May 2013. We hope you'll be able to attend a performance near you! We're also proud to announce that we are releasing Greetings & Farewells, an album of live recordings of the repertoire from last season's concert program. We just launched our first fundraising campaign. We received our first grant -- from ACDA-PA -- and used it to hold a workshop with a former music director of Chanticleer. And we remain honored and elated that Ensemble Companio was named the winner of the 2012 American Prize in choral performance (community division) based on a recording of our debut performance.
We hope to see you this spring at a concert! Thank you for supporting Ensemble Companio in its work to build bridges between people through inspiring, authentic performances of the finest choral music.
Yours in song,
Joseph Gregorio
Inside:
Greetings & Farewells: Ensemble Companio releases its first CD
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*|IF:ARCHIVE_PAGE|*We invite you to take the music of Ensemble Companio home with you!
We’re about to release our first album, Greetings & Farewells. It's a collection of the best live recordings from our inaugural concert season featuring music by Tallis, Weelkes, Lasso, Victoria, Byrd, Billings, Schumann, Rheinberger, Chesnokov, and Poulenc, as well as traditional American shape-note music from the Sacred Harp, Gregorian chant, and arrangements of Irish folk tunes by Alice Parker, Charles Villiers Stanford, and director Joseph Gregorio. Greetings & Farewells will be available for sale at each of our concerts this season as well as through our website. *|END:IF|*
Ensemble Companio's November Workshop
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*|IF:ARCHIVE_PAGE|*In November 2012, Ensemble Companio received a grant from ACDA-PA to host a workshop with director emeritus of Chanticleer, Matthew Oltman. He led the musicians in a 90-minute session focusing on details of interpretation and performance in three pieces from our 2012-13 repertoire. The workshop was a resounding success, with the musicians benefiting greatly from Oltman's expertise and dynamic presence on the podium.
Oltman joined Chanticleer as a tenor in 1999, was appointed assistant director in 2004, and music director in 2009. Mr. Oltman currently works in program development for Distinguished Concerts International New York.
ACDA-PA is the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Choral Directors Assosication, a nonprofit music-education organization whose central purpose is to promote excellence in choral music through performance, composition, publication, research, and teaching. In addition, ACDA strives through arts advocacy to elevate choral music's position in American society.. ACDA-PA's grants to community choirs allow such groups as ours to find creative and educational ways to improve and grow. *|END:IF|*
The American Prize
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*|IF:ARCHIVE_PAGE|*In August 2012, Ensemble Companio was awarded the American Prize in Choral Performance (community division). On the strength of a live recording of our debut performance performance, Ensemble Companio was selected as the winner from a nationwide pool of ten semi-finalists. Competition judge Dr. David Griggs-Janower, commenting on the ensemble's performance, wrote, "A truly wonderful group. In addition to [their] technical near-perfection[...], there was an expressiveness so often missing from groups that strive to sing so cleanly. No safe, boring, pretty sound here. I was moved by their singing; I felt they believed in what they were doing."
The American Prize is a series of new, non-profit competitions unique in scope and structure, designed to recognize and reward the best performing artists, ensembles and composers in the United States based on submitted recordings. The American Prize was founded in 2009 and is awarded annually in many areas of the performing arts.*|END:IF|*
Indiegogo Fundraising Campaign
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*|IF:ARCHIVE_PAGE|*To help raise funds for the release of our debut album,
Greetings & Farewells, we've just launched our first online fundraising campaign on
Indiegogo. In the first three days of our campaign, we blew past our initial goal of $1000, so we've raised our goal to $5000 in order to fund a recording of this season's repertoire,
America Singing. Please
click here to visit our campaign page on Indiegogo and help us reach our new goal! For just $25, you can receive a copy of
Greetings & Farewells and acknowledgement in our 2013-14 concert program.
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