Christmas Concert Greetings

Christmas With The Hartford Chorale promises to be an evening of serious choral music, which we have been studiously preparing under the batons of Music Director Richard Coffey and Assistant Music Director Colin Britt. We can hardly wait to entertain you with it. Mr. Britt will be conducting the Respighi Lauda for the full Chorale, and has prepared and will lead the Hartford Chorale Chamber Singers for their portion of the program. And of course, there will be some moments of dashing through the snow, as well.

The Hartford Chorale was established in 1972, and through the years has become Greater Hartford’s primary symphonic chorus, especially in its critically acclaimed collaborations with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, whose musicians are joining us tonight. Under the musical direction of Maestro Coffey since 2005, the Hartford Chorale reaches out to and inspires the widest possible audience with exceptional performances of a broad range of choral literature, including the renowned choral masterpieces.

In recent years, we have sung the Verdi Requiem, Handel’s Messiah, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, and Vaughan Williams’s Hodie, and we have participated in the Hartford Symphony’s Holiday Pops Concerts. We closed the Hartford Symphony’s last season with a rousing Carmina Burana, and opened the current season this past October with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and the Yellow River Cantata, sung in Mandarin Chinese. Next Spring, we will be performing Elgar’s monumental Dream of Gerontius with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. We will welcome you at our performances.

The Chorale comprises 170 men and women, mostly from central Connecticut, with others traveling from Massachusetts and Rhode Island for our weekly rehearsals in West Hartford. The Chorale offers talented and experienced singers opportunities to study and perform at a professional level. We are led by a 26-member Board of Governors, most of whom are themselves performers. Chorale members sustain and manage our organization through volunteer service, dues payments and fund-raising. Professional section leaders provide vocal and musical leadership. The Chorale offers full-scholarship high school and college internships, and a Continuing Education Unit program for music educators. If you are a singer, please consider an audition to join us.

The Christmas program is the culmination of months of effort by virtually the entire Board, many other Chorale members, our Music Director, Assistant Music Director, and our Executive Director Alan Mann. Our Past President, Mike Dunne, has overseen the entire operation, and has directed a host of committees through their assignments to produce this concert tonight.

Thank you for sharing your evening with us. We hope you enjoy it.

Walter Mayo
Board President
The Hartford Chorale, Inc.