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 specializing in music from before 1750 and from the last hundred years. It is supported by the Yale Institute of Sacred Music with the School of Music and open by audition to all Yale students. In addition to performing regularly in New Haven and New York 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 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. 2009 marks Schola Cantorum’s first season under the direction of conductor Masaaki Suzuki.

Since 2007, the choir has recorded the Bach and Mendelssohn Magnificats for commercial release, sung under the direction of internationally renowned conductors Helmuth Rilling, Krzysztof Penderecki, Sir Neville Mariner, Stephen Layton, Paul Hillier, and Nicholas McGegan, and performed the Monteverdi 1610 Vespers in New Haven and New York and the Bach Mass in B Minor in New Haven, South Korea, and China. Schola Cantorum has also made tours to England, Hungary and southwest France. This season Schola welcomes Masaaki Suzuki as its new director, who will conduct performances of Bach cantatas and Monteverdi madrigals. Guest conductors in 2009-10 are Dale Warland and Simon Carrington. 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, and Yale faculty members Ezra Laderman, Aaron Jay Kernis, Ingram Marshall and Joan Panetti.

"...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 2009)

About the Yale Schola Cantorum

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