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Praised for "professional musicianship" and "rich, free sound" (Boston Music Intelligencer), the Temple University Concert Choir has enjoyed a regional and national reputation for excellence and versatility. The choir is comprised of undergraduate and graduate students at the Boyer College of Music and Dance. In addition to performing the great masterworks of the choral and choral/orchestral canon, the choir is committed to the performance of new American choral music and has presented many first Philadelphia performances, including Robert Moran's Hagoromo, Alfred Schnittke's Requiem, Arvo Pärt's Passio Nostri Jesu Christi Secundum Joannem, Eriks Ešenvalds's Three Teasdale Poems, and Donald McCullough's Song of the Shulamite.
The Concert Choir has been Temple's choral ambassador in the USA and abroad. Under the direction of Alan Harler, the ensemble earned invitations to perform at the National and Eastern Division conferences of the American Choral Directors Association in 1995, 2000, 2004, and 2008, at the inaugural conference of the National Collegiate Choral Organization in 2006, and at Alice Tully Hall with Manhattan Concert Productions in 2013. It has performed across the USA as well as China, Hong Kong, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico, and has sung for some of the world's great conductors, including Eugene Ormandy, Riccardo Muti, Leopold Stokowski, Klaus Tennstedt, Zubin Mehta, Carlo Maria Giulini, Krzysztof Penderecki and Helmuth Rilling.
The choir has performed under the distinctive leadership of Elaine Brown, Robert Page, and Alan Harler, and since 2011 has been conducted by Paul Rardin. Its most recent CD Waken the Dawn, recorded in 2012 on the BCM&D label, features words and music by African-American composers and poets. The ensemble's recording of William Averitt's Afro-American Fragments was praised by the composer as "absolutely superb from start to finish." |
