Yale Schola Cantorum

Masaaki Suzuki, conductor
Professor of choral conducting
Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale School of Music

Yale Schola Cantorum, founded in 2003 by Simon Carrington, is a 24-voice chamber choir that sings in concerts and choral services. Supported by the Yale Institute of Sacred Music with the School of Music, and open by audition to all Yale students, it specializes in music from before 1750 and the last hundred years. Since 2009 Schola Cantorum has been under the direction of conductor Masaaki Suzuki.

In addition to performing regularly in New Haven and New York, the choir records and tours nationally and internationally. Schola Cantorum's live recording with Robert Mealy and Yale Collegium Musicum of Heinrich Biber's 1693 Vesperae longiores ac breviores received international acclaim from the early music press, as have subsequent CDs of J.S. Bach's rarely heard 1725 version of the St. John Passion and Antonio Bertali's Missa resurrectionis. A commercial recording on the Naxos label of Mendelssohn and Bach Magnificats was released in fall 2009. Schola Cantorum has toured internationally in England, Hungary, France, China, South Korea, Italy, Greece, and Turkey, and will travel to Japan and Singapore in June of 2013. In recent years, the choir has sung under the direction of the internationally renowned conductors Helmuth Rilling, Krzysztof Penderecki, Sir Neville Marriner, Stephen Layton, Paul Hillier, Nicholas McGegan, Dale Warland, James O'Donnell, Simon Halsey, David Hill, and Stefan Parkman.

Highlights of Schola's 2012-2013 season with Masaaki Suzuki include performances of Bach cantatas in New Haven and Boston; the Mass in B-Minor with Juilliard415 in New Haven and New York; and a program of Bach and Mendelssohn with Bach Collegium Japan and the New York Philharmonic. Guest conductors in 2012-2013 include Nicholas McGegan, Erwin Ortner, and Simon Carrington.

"...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 March 2012)

About the Yale Schola Cantorum

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