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The Lynn Swanson Festival Singers (= LSFS) traces its history to the 1985 creation of Gwinnett Festival Singers by founder William Baker and his long-time associate, Janis Lane. The ensemble was known as William Baker Festival Singers from 1998 to 2015. With the appointment of Lynn Swanson as the second Music Director & Conductor of the ensemble in June 2015 the choir took the name Lynn Swanson Festival Singers.
The 50-voice Festival Singers specializes in short-form sacred a cappella classics and spirituals, in addition to annual performances of masterworks for chorus and chamber orchestra. Major concerts have included a performance of Johannes Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem with the Gwinnett Symphony Orchestra, and a performance in Spivey Hall of J.S. Bach’s St. John Passion (BWV 245). Other masterworks over the years have included Igor Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, W.A. Mozart’s Requiem, Solemn Vespers, Missa Brevis in D, and Mass in C minor; Dietrich Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu Nostri, and Benjamin Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb and Ceremony of Carols, along with dozens of works from Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina to Zoltán Kodály. The Festival Singers performed the Ernest Bloch's Avodath Hakodesh for the rededication of the magnificent pipe organ at The Temple on Peachtree, and at the historic Community Christian Church in Kansas City, a performance broadcast in its entirety by Kansas Public Radio on the eve of Passover 2012.
The ensemble is known for its expressive memorized performances of signature a cappella concerts demonstrating a striking diversity and depth of repertoire. The sound of the Festival Singers has been hailed by music critics and the general public, including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, ”Sensuous tonal beauty….a level of balance, blend, intonation and expressiveness that puts the average community chorus to shame…” The Charleston Post & Courier, ”…the South’s premier a cappella choir…exceptional tone and ferocious emotion…” and the New Orleans Times-Picayune, “…inspiring and exhilarating.”
The Festival Singers has produced 23 nationally released recordings and has been featured in local television programs across the South, and on national radio programs that include The Sounds of Majesty, The First Art and National Public Radio’s Performance Today. They have toured throughout the South and Midwest in the USA and the UK, having appeared in Birmingham’s Divinity Chapel, Atlanta’s Spivey Hall, the DeKalb International Choral Festival, Canterbury Cathedral, and the Bristol (England) Festival, in addition to annual performances before capacity audiences at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, since 1989. The Festival Singers has become a model for professionallevel volunteer choruses that have inspired the creation of similar organizations in the Atlanta area and across the nation. Indeed, the ambitious chorus that met for a first rehearsal in the basement of a Norcross church 31 years ago is now the flagship ensemble of a national arts organization that through the years has created over a dozen choirs involving hundreds of men, women and young people in Georgia, Kansas and Missouri. |
