Yale Camerata

Marguerite L. Brooks, conductor
Associate Professor (Adjunct) of Choral Conducting and Chair of the Program in Choral Conducting, Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale School of Music

Founded in 1985 by its conductor, Marguerite L. Brooks, the Yale Camerata is a vocal ensemble sponsored by the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. The group’s singers are Yale graduate and undergraduate students, faculty, staff, and experienced singers from the New Haven community. The Camerata performs a widely varied spectrum of choral literature, with a specific commitment to recently composed choral music. The Camerata has collaborated with the Yale Glee Club, Yale Philharmonia, Yale Symphony, Yale Band, Yale Chamber Players, Yale Collegium Musicum, the New Haven Chorale, and the symphony orchestras of Hartford, New Haven, and Norwalk. The ensemble has also performed for Yale Music Spectrum and New Music New Haven. The chamber chorus of the Yale Camerata has performed at the Yale Center for British Art and at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. They have traveled to Germany to perform the Berlioz Requiem with choruses from Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Israel, Great Britain, and the Ukraine, and, in 2001, spent a week in residence at Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London, England. The Camerata has been heard on Connecticut Public Radio and on national broadcasts of National Public Radio’s program “Performance Today.” Guest conductors have included Robert Shaw, Jaap Schröder, Sir David Willcocks, Krzysztof Penderecki, Sir Neville Marriner, Helmuth Rilling, and Nicholas McGegan. With the Institute of Sacred Music, the Camerata has commissioned and premiered works of Martin Bresnick, Daniel Kellogg, Stephen Paulus, Daniel Pinkham, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, among others. The chorus has sung first performances of works by many composers, including Kathryn Alexander, Tawnie Olson, and Francine Trester.

Marguerite L. Brooks holds degrees from Mount Holyoke College and Temple University. She has served on the faculties of Smith and Amherst Colleges, and was also director of choral music at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Ms. Brooks joined the Yale faculty in 1985 as chair of the choral conducting program at the School of Music and the Institute of Sacred Music. She is also director of music at the Church of the Redeemer in New Haven.

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