Season 10: Our Mission in Action

JULY

After hosting Summer Sings for a couple of Seasons, Vince Peterson felt that he would prefer to offer choral singers a more valuable educational opportunity during the Summer months and brought back his stand-alone Ear Training workshop that has been run several times as part of the Institute in years past. Re-named the Ear-Training Bootcamp, the workshop was held at Regis High School over a 2-week period, with Steve Smith from Mannes School of Music teaching a second advanced class in parallel to Vince.

SEPTEMBER

National Sawdust Residency Launched Choral Chameleon was featured on National Sawdust’s website and calendar as Group-in-Residence. Vince Peterson and Board President Nicole Belmont participated in meet and greets between other residents and curators, building new connections.

OCTOBER

Kickstarter Campaign This year we worked with a superb filmmaker Tobin Del Cuore to help tell the story of the Season’s artistic focus – shining a light on the humans behind every voice in a choir. Several singers participated as subjects in a dedicated shoot for the campaign, which helped to provide a timely bulk of the funding for our Season’s artistic program.

NOVEMBER

‘Shift’ - St Paul’s Carroll Street & St Luke in The Fields The Chorus performed our Season’s first self-produced concert, which is the only chronologically-programmed concert we’ve ever done! It featured composers who had explored ‘what if’ ideas in choral music that stretched the art-form for their time. The Chorus showed their chameleon-like skills in handling vocal styles ranging from plainchant, early polyphony, baroque, romantic, modern, spiritual, minimalist and beyond.

Caroling for Catholic Charities & Herald Square Partnership Thanks to outreach by Chorus soprano Kathryn Squitieri, members of the Chorus performed carols in two public locations during the Holiday Season.

Movement Interviews for April 2018’s ‘Body’ Our collaborator for the physical dimension of the ‘Mind Body Spirit Series’ was choreographer Coco Karol. The musical content and movement of the ‘Body’ program would be informed by memories our singers still hold in their bodies. Coco personally interviewed every Chorus member using a method of exchange known as ‘movement interviews’ where she asks unexpected questions while moving with her subject, which is effective at drawing out answers from a singer’s sub-conscious.

JANUARY

Sxip Shirey at Ferus Festival – National Sawdust The Chorus made our first appearance as Group-in-Residence in composer Sxip Shirey’s incredible show as part of Ferus Festival. 30 of our Chorus singers once again became his vocal installation ‘The Gauntlet’, through which the show’s audience walked while singers passed notes across to each other, fed from Sxip at the head of the line.

FEBRUARY

Debut of Mind Body Spirit Series - ‘Spirit‘ - National Sawdust ‘Spirit’ was a deeply personal concert, themed around the formative musical experiences of every Ensemble member. Each singer co-curated the program with a deeply personal choice of music that reflected who they are as a musician, which was accompanied by projection-mapped visuals of artifacts from their lives, expertly programmed by artist Eric Epstein. Vince Peterson curated a number of pieces, including a world-premiere commission by composer Ed Thompson ‘Effortlessly Love Flows’ and ‘I Am Music‘ by Dale Trumbore. As the show progressed, dancers from Katherine Pettit Creative emerged from the audience.

‘Spirit‘ (Mind Body Spirit Series) - First Unitarian Church in Westport, Connecticut

Composer Edward Thompson invited Choral Chameleon to bring the ‘Spirit’ program to his congregation in Connecticut, where he has been music director for many years. They gave us a tremendous welcome.

MARCH

Movement Workshops for ‘Body’ For the second installment of the ‘Mind Body Spirit’ Series – ‘Body’ – Chorus members continued to work with choreographer Coco Karol to develop material that had derived from her movement interviews with Chorus members during the winter. The group prototyped movement which would be extended to the entire choir for our performances in April.

APRIL

‘Body’ (Mind Body Spirit Series) - Irondale Center, Brooklyn The Chorus presented two wonderful nights in a theater in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Stunning, award-winning photographic images from the American Photography anthology were projected onto the wall, the Chorus brought many songs to life with movement around the space (including a rollerblading moment!) and we welcomed a band of fabulous brass, percussion and bass players. The music itself, pivoting on Vince Peterson’s own ‘I Sing The Body Electric’ set to Whitman’s poetry, was also inspired by the interviews with the choristers.

MAY

San Francisco Tour As part of the centennial celebrations of the San Francisco School of Music, alumnus Vince Peterson was invited to bring Choral Chameleon Ensemble for a short residency. The Ensemble performed all of the pieces in the school’s biennial Choral Composition competition and a preview of ‘MIND’ from the Mind Body Spirit Series.

An additional performance of ‘MIND’ took place at the Harvey Milk Center for the Arts, where we also hosted a workshop for Middle-Schoolers. A separate workshop for Young Adult solo performers was held at the Randall Museum.

JUNE

‘Mind’ (Mind Body Spirit Series) – National Sawdust, Brooklyn The Ensemble performed the last installment of our 10th Anniversary themed concert series, which centered on the process of learning music itself. The program included two official world premieres - by former Composer-in-Residence Rex Isenberg ‘Laudamus, Adoramus, Hippopotamus’ and Joseph Stillwell ‘Toccata for Choir’ - as well as a reprise of our 2013 Composer-in Residence commission from Adam Ward ‘Gradus Ad Parnassum’ for choir, narrators and cello.

Choral Chameleon Summer Institute This was the 8th year of running the Summer Institute, held once again at St Paul’s Episcopal Church in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. The Chorus participated as lab choir for the first time, offering conducting students a better real-world scenario to learn from and enabled the professional Ensemble to focus even more on development of composers’ pieces. The concert offered a dazzling array of premieres, several with trumpet accompaniment, thanks to guest faculty member and trumpeter Nathan Plante.

10th Anniversary Party The wonderful week was topped off with a 10th Anniversary Birthday After-Party, complete with Choral Chameleon birthday cake!