• School of Creative Arts
• BRANDEIS HOME

University Chorus

The Brandeis University Chorus is open to all Brandeis undergraduate and graduate students. It performs great and enduring music from the vast Western tradition, a cappella and accompanied. This range of music stretches from the early renaissance to the present. Students soloists from the UChor are frequently featured.

We perform music from the Renaissance to the present drawn from the virtually infinite repertory of the Wetern tradition, Occasionally, we will sing from the Broadway and Hollywood repertory and the African and African-American tradition. We sing pieces because of their intensity, their very great inspiration, and their classic stature. In these pieces we find the very deepest meaning for human beings; in short, pieces which if we did not sing, we would be selling you short. In addition to making the UChor and ChChoir a release from academic pressures, UChor is a place to make art together, it’s not competitive.

AUDITIONS for University Chorus and Chamber Choir SIGN UP room 210 Slosberg
Tuesday August 30 2:00 – 5:00 pm
Wednesday August 31 2:00 – 5:00 pm
Thursday September 1 noon – 3:00 pm

AUDITION University Chorus

1. Singing scales to hear range possibilities and voice quality
2. Slow arpeggio singing for accuracy of pitch
3. Intervals: ½ and whole steps differentiation
4. Rhythm exercise for accuracy
5. Sight singing your part of a Bach chorale with piano accompanying

REGULAR REHEARSALS
Tuesdays and Thursdays: 5:00 – 6:30 pm
Recital Hall in Slosberg Muusic Center
Attendance is required at all rehearsals and performances.

AUDITION Brandeis Chamber Choir (see Chamber Choir) 
All of the above plus sight singing a piece of Renaissance polyphony – if you’ve sung a motet, you’ve most likely done this kind of music.

AUDITIONS for Private Voice Lessons (Music 112)
Audition for UChor as above and sign up to sing for the voice teachers.
Friday September 2 2:00 - 4:00 pm

Our annual community sing, The Messiah-SING, while a community event, fits these standards.

Our recent programs of Jerome Kern, Kurt Weill, or Duke Ellington, they're chosen because they’re classic American songs.

When we sing African and African - American programs, we are changing to a cultural standard, but also we’re choosing some classic spirituals. .

When we sing Carissimi's Jephte in November (one of the first oratorios, telling a tragic story of both hubris and tragedy, from the 17th century), we are delving into a powerful Bible story and a turning point in music history as well.

When we sing motets by Heinrich Schütz in March, we’ll be taking on one of the great text setters in all of music history; his music interprets and brings words alive all at once.

We’ll be part of a semi-staged performance of Die Fledermaus in March. It’s a great operetta from the 19th century still so admired that it’s performed every year somewhere.

In April, we’ll do honor to the music of Irving Fine, the founder of the Brandeis University Music Department and School of Creative Arts. His music carries great wit while also adhering to the standards of intensity, inspiration, and classic stature.

In additon, in order to perform these pieces as well as time, talent, and resources allow, we also spend some time, as a group, on singers’ breathing, on rhythm and pitch competency to improve sight-reading, and on expressive phrase making.

Previous years’ programs include:

A narrative of the story of Elijah, excerpting from Mendelssohn’s Elijah

A concert version of Kurt Weill’s Lost in the Stars

Songs, solo and choral of Rodgers & Hart

Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas

Concerts with poetry

Orpheus, First Poet and Musician
Monteverdi
Gluck
Offenbach
Leonard Muellner, Classics, guest reciter

War, its music and poetry
Guest reciters: Mary Baine Campbell, English, Marya Lowry, Theater Arts, Michael T. Gilmore, English 
Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms, etc.

Harlem, its songs and poetry
spirituals, Ellington, Gershwin, Kern
Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes
student readers and soloists