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CHORUS ANGELICUS (The Angelic Choir)

Chorus Angelicus is comprised of four choral ensembles, involving more than seventy children who hail from towns throughout southwestern New England. The Artistic Director is Grammy-nominated composer and conductor, Nicholas White, and the choirs are in residence at Trinity Episcopal Church in Torrington, CT.

The choruses perform a large and varied repertoire, from the classics of choral literature to contemporary and original compositions. There is a strong emphasis placed on musical education, as well as performance, for all the age groups and ability levels.

The youngest singers enter through the Training Choir and Advanced Training Choir (Karen Sovak, Director), and progress through the Junior Choir (Julie Bickford, Director), with the ultimate goal of joining the Senior Choir. Each group maintains an increasingly demanding rehearsal and performance schedule, and each plays its part in the organization producing more than 25 concerts each year. Recent engagements for Chorus Angelicus have included concerts at Music Mountain (Lakeville, CT), Infinity Hall (Norfolk, CT), and a tour to Cape Cod. In conjunction with the adult choir, Gaudeamus, programs featuring Brahms' A German Requiem, Finzi's Lo, the full final sacrifice, David Briggs' Requiem (CT Premiere) and the Magnificat, Missa Brevis and In Sure And Certain Hope by Nicholas White have been presented to enthusiastic audiences throughout Connecticut. The annual presentation of Christmas Angelicus continues to be an audience favorite, with concerts given in many local churches and chapels during the month of December.

This internationally acclaimed children’s choir has impressed audiences with the best of choral music, both sacred and secular, since its founding in 1991 by Paul Halley. Performances have included collaborations with the Hartford Symphony and the Paul Winter Consort in venues such as Boston’s Symphony Hall, the Music Shed in Norfolk, CT, the Warner Theater in Torrington, CT, and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. Chorus Angelicus has toured nationally in Florida and the Pacific Northwest, and internationally in Nova Scotia, Vancouver, B.C., and Ireland.

The choir is frequently invited to sing at workshops, on concert series, and at music festivals, and Chorus Angelicus with Gaudeamus was invited to perform at the 1999 inauguration ceremony of Connecticut’s Governor. Connecticut Public Television crafted a feature program on Chorus Angelicus, focusing on the choir’s accomplishments, in the recent Music For A Great Space series. Christmas in Connecticut, a book by Diane Smith of The Morning Show (WTIC-AM), highlights the choir’s beloved Christmas Angelicus concert series, also televised in a news special with NBC in New York and Hartford, and broadcast on WFCR and WNPR. In 2006, the CD What Child Is This? featuring Chorus Angelicus and Gaudeamus was recorded and distributed on the Pelagos label. Chorus Angelicus is featured in a millenium compilation of its most vibrant repertoire, from Serbia and Russia to South Africa and the Dominican Republic. Entitled Untraveled Worlds, this Pelagos release has garnered rave reviews and significant airplay from WNPR stations throughout the country. The choir was also featured on a Telarc release, Dance On A Moonbeam, with world class artists Frederica von Stade, Dawn Upshaw, Meryl Streep, and the London Symphony Orchestra.

GAUDEAMUS ( Let us rejoice)

Gaudeamus is an adult chamber choir of professional and semi-professional free lance singers formed in 1992, and directed by Nicholas White. This choir performs in conjunction with Chorus Angelicus, providing the alto, tenor and bass parts, and giving the younger choristers the opportunity to experience singing such masterworks as Bach’s St. John Passion and Mass in B Minor, Handel’s Dixit Dominus, Britten’s Saint Nicholas, and Schnittke’s Requiem. In recent years, programs featuring Brahms' A German Requiem, Finzi's Lo, the full final sacrifice, David Briggs' Requiem (CT Premiere) and the Magnificat, Missa Brevis and In Sure And Certain Hope by Nicholas White have been presented to enthusiastic audiences throughout Connecticut. Gaudeamus also performs alone, without Chorus Angelicus, and has recently presented works as diverse as Monteverdi's Missa Brevis, Bach's Jesu, meine Freude, Herbert Howells' Requiem, Benjamin Britten's Rejoice In The Lamb and the Connecticut Premiere of Nicholas White's The Aim Was Song. Gaudeamus is also known for its exploration of world choral music with instrumentalists from all over the world, and is featured with folk legend Pete Seeger on his Grammy Award-winning CD, Pete. More recently, the group was invited by SONY/Pioneer to record an album of a capella masterworks to demonstrate the newest surround-sound technology. Entitled Sacred Feast, this DMP release has won high praise from Billboard Magazine, Pro Audio Magazine, and high-end audiophiles the world over.