Yale Schola Cantorum

Simon Carrington, conductor
Professor of choral conducting
Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale School of Music

Yale Schola Cantorum, founded in 2003, is a 24-voice chamber choir specializing in music before 1750 and from the last hundred years, supported by the Yale Institute of Sacred Music with the School of Music and open by audition to all Yale students. Simon Carrington is the group's founder and conductor. In addition to performing regularly in New Haven, New York and Boston, Schola Cantorum records and tours nationally and internationally. Their live recording on CD with Robert Mealy and Yale Collegium Musicum of Heinrich Biber’s 1693 Vesperae longiores ac breviores, (available through www.choralcds.org/biber.htm) received international acclaim from the early music press as have their subsequent CDs of J.S. Bach’s rarely heard 1725 version of the St John Passion and Antonio Bertali's Missa Resurrectionis, released on the reZound label and available online at www.gothic-catalog.com.

Over the last two seasons the choir has received standing ovations for its performances at national choral conventions in San Antonio and Miami, presented a series of programs of the music of Bach under guest conductor Helmuth Rilling and music of the French Baroque with the Ensemble européen William Byrd, Paris, recorded the Bach and Mendelssohn Magnificats for commercial release and performed the Monteverdi 1610 Vespers in New Haven and New York. Schola Cantorum has made tours to England, Hungary and southwest France (the CD Souvenirs de la France Profonde is also available through www.choralcds.org). This season Schola appears on the professional concert series at St. Thomas Fifth Avenue, New York, welcomes the internationally renowned conductors Paul Hillier, for a program of Baltic music, and Nicholas McGegan to mark the 250th anniversary of Handel’s death. The combined forces of Schola Cantorum and Yale Collegium Players will round out the year with performances of the Bach B Minor Mass in New Haven and on tour in China and Korea. The choir’s other repertoire to date includes works by Josquin, Manchicourt, Lassus, Willaert, Tallis, Byrd, Guerrero, Gibbons, Schütz, Charpentier, Purcell, Handel, Zelenka, Brahms, Bruckner, Poulenc, Stravinsky, Dallapiccola, Britten, Tippett, Feldman, Rautavaara, Gubaidulina, Berio, Stucky, MacMillan, O’Regan, Yale faculty members Ezra Laderman, Aaron Jay Kernis, Ingram Marshall and Joan Panetti, and Yale composition students Robin McClellan and Zachary Wadsworth.

"...a dazzling revelation of Heinrich Biber’s Vesperae (1693) in its live North American premiere,” Yale Schola Cantorum’s first cd is available through www.ChoralCDs.org

"......The performances [of Bertali's Missa Resurrectionis] are A-level all the way. Sopranos Abigail Haynes and Mellissa Hughes sing beautifully in the Geist motets, and the voices of the Yale Schola Cantorum make strong contributions throughout with their bright, youthful, and beautifully balanced sound. The hand of that choral magician, Simon Carrington, is in evidence here............" Craig Zeichner for Early Music America.

An article from EMA about Simon Carrington and the Yale Schola Cantorum

(Updated July 2007)

About the Yale Schola Cantorum

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