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Welcome to the Nashoba Valley Chorale Spring Newsletter!
We're excited to share the news of our upcoming concerts and events
The Nashoba Valley Chorale is a premier community chorale comprised of 100 members from all over the Nashoba Valley area and beyond with a local audience of over 1000 people attending each season. We are a non-auditioned group welcoming adult singers of all ages and abilities.
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What is this Thing Called Love?
The Chorale will present two concerts for the spring 2025 season.
In February, we'll feature our collaborative pianist, Shawn McCann, playing in a jazz trio (piano, bass and drums) – a first for us!
The NVC singers will sing about love, presenting compositions by Cole Porter, Morten Lauridsen, John Rutter, Duke Ellington, Bill Withers, and more. Our featured Emerging Artist for 2025 is Sofia Santoro.
We're really looking forward to singing Lauridsen’s beautiful a cappella work, Les Chansons des Roses, and then we'll switch gears as we essay some vocal jazz pieces with the jazz trio. Not to be missed!
Saturday, February 1, 2025
7:30 pm
Acton Congregational Church
12 Concord Road
Acton, MA 01720
Sunday, February 2, 2025
3:00 pm
Groton-Dunstable Performing Arts
344 Main Street
Groton, MA 01450
Mark your calendars for our second Spring 2025 concert!
For our final concert of the 2024-2025 season, we will revisit a favorite masterwork, Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem. We will sing it in the chamber music setting, with two pianists, one being our own, Shawn McCann, which gives the work a sense of intimacy, tenderness, and balance not always found in the orchestral version. Featuring Deborah Selig, soprano, and David McFerrin, baritone.
Sunday, April 27, 2025
3:00 pm
Groton-Dunstable Performing Arts
344 Main Street
Groton, MA 01450
Get your tickets for February now:
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Proud Sponsors Supporting NVC | |
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We greatly appreciate all individuals and businesses who make donations and provide sponsorships that enable us to operate and fulfill our mission. While a significant portion of our funding comes from membership dues, more is needed to hire high-quality, professional musicians and soloists, rent rehearsal space and performance venues, and pay for many other necessities. We rely on donations and sponsorships in support of the arts to help defray these costs so that we may continue to bring the joy of choral music to our communities.
Please click on the logos below to learn more about our generous corporate sponsors
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Anne Watson Born, Music Director
What is this thing called love?
This funny thing called love?
Just who can solve its mystery?
Why should it make a fool of me? (Cole Porter)
Or, as Rainer Maria Rilke puts it:
Against whom, rose, have you taken on these thorns?
Your too fragile joy, has it forced you to become this armed thing?
The Chorale will be exploring various aspects of love in our upcoming Pops program, What Is This Thing Called Love? We are having a great time learning classic songs by Jerome Kern and Duke Ellington, among others, along with contemporary pieces by Bill Withers and Peter Eldridge. We will be singing with a jazz trio led by our wonderful collaborative pianist, Shawn McCann. Shawn is an accomplished jazz musician and we are learning a great deal from him. The jazz trio will also play some instrumental standards and will perform with our Emerging Artist, Sofia Santoro.
The singers are also working on Birthday Madrigals, a set of jazz-inspired settings of texts by Shakespeare and other Elizabethan-era poets. John Rutter composed these pieces (very much in the style of the Swingle Singers) to celebrate the 75th birthday of the jazz pianist George Shearing.
And, somewhat unusually, we are including Morten Lauridsen’s lush and evocative Les Chansons des Roses in our concert. This setting of five poems by Rilke was completed in 1994 and bears all the hallmarks of Lauridsen’s style: harmonies with added tones (very similar to jazz harmonies); melodic gestures that recur throughout the five pieces; and gorgeous chantlike melodies. The Chorale loves singing Lauridsen, and it’s a treat to be singing in French.
We are looking forward to seeing you at our Pops Concert on February 1 or 2!
Anne Watson Born
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Meet A Few Of Our Members | |
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Shawn McCann - Collaborative pianist
Shawn McCann, collaborative pianist, has been active in the area for more than 40 years. He’s been the Nashoba Valley Chorale’s accompanist since 2010 and a staff accompanist at Groton Hill Music Center. Shawn is also the Director of Music Ministries at First Parish Church of Groton, is a credentialed UU music leader, and past president of the Association for UU Music Ministries.
He earned his Bachelor of Music degrees in Piano Performance and Music Theory/Composition from the University of Lowell. Shawn lives in Pepperell, MA with his wife, Monica.
"My title is 'collaborative pianist' because I do more than just sit down in front of the piano and play. I work with the conductor to teach the chorale the music. Sometimes that means plunking out the notes, warming the choir up, leading the rehearsal if Anne is out, leading sectionals for the various voice parts, and accompanying the chorale in concert.
For this upcoming concert, I have pulled together a jazz trio. The bass player is Justin Meyer. He brings extensive experience to the trio, having played with the Glenn Miller Orchestra, Bucky Pizzarelli, The Four Freshmen, the New Black Eagle Jazz Band, and many other Boston area jazz, blues, and Celtic music artists.
Our drummer is Abe Finch. Abe has worked with Anne and the chorale in the past, playing in the orchestra for several of our concerts. He is also a music educator. I’ve played with Abe several times over the years and he's just a phenomenal drummer and percussionist. He’s one of those musicians who’s comfortable whether he’s playing rock, pop, jazz, or classical.
Much of my love of jazz, and the understanding of the rhythm and groove came from my college professor Fred Buda. He used to play drums and percussion for the Herb Pomeroy band and the Boston Pops. I was in a jazz big band that he led at the University of Lowell. I learned so much about rhythm from him (that I didn't get from my classical piano teachers)."
How does singing jazz differ from classical choral music?
Classical choral music follows strict rhythmic notation with precise subdivisions and explicit tempo changes. Jazz choral music emphasizes rhythmic flexibility, requiring singers to internalize the swing rhythm and adapt to different styles.
I am thrilled to be a part of this unique Nashoba Valley Chorale Pops concert.
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Melinda Stewart - Explains the Emerging Artist Program
Soprano
The Emerging Artist program is an annual initiative to give young singers the opportunity to perform as soloists with the chorale. The program was launched in 2017 by Melinda Stewart, then Chorale president.
“I was thinking about how to make the chorale more accessible and relevant to all ages. The chorale basically did standard classical fare. So I was looking for a way to grow our younger audience with a variety of styles.
The first year we invited Katie McNally, a former Westford resident and Concord Academy grad to perform with us. She is a well-known Scottish fiddler, teacher and arranger. I've known Katie since she was a little kid. She has numerous albums of traditional Celtic music and is known internationally. Katie arranged two pieces for the chorale to perform with her band. In addition, we did a search for local high school and college-age singers to feature.
Since the program began, we have featured over 20 young artists. We would like to believe that the experience of singing with the chorale, orchestra, and a full audience of family, friends, and music lovers encouraged them to a lifetime passion for music. Many of the singers have gone on to study music in college and beyond.”
A few notable examples:
Nicole Burke, soprano, was a former member of NVC as a high schooler and has soloed with the group three times. Her first ever solo performance was with the Chorale… she went on to college at McGill and earned her Masters in Vocal Performance at the Royal College of Music in London. She performed as Emerging Artist (Faure's Requiem) in 2018, and 2022. She was the soloist for Shubert Mass in G. Today she performs widely, has her own music teaching studio, and is on the faculty of UMass Lowell.
Kimi Sturgeon, soprano, sang with the chorale for two seasons, 2017-18 and 2018-19, soloing in Vivaldi's “Gloria”. She dreams of becoming a world-renowned soprano. She attended Boston University’s Tanglewood Institute’s Young Artists Vocal Program. Kimi has performed at Carnegie Hall twice, winning the American Fine Arts Festival and the American Protégé International Vocal Competition. She is still pursuing singing and acting.
In the 2020-21 season, Margaleet Katzenblickstein, soprano, soloed in the Chichester Psalms as a junior in high school. She’s studying at UMass Lowell and is a “teaching artist” at the UML String Project providing low-cost music lessons to elementary students.
In the 2017-2018 season, Tim Goliger, a 16-year-old junior at Marlborough High School, soloed in the chorale’s very first group of Emerging Artist soloists. He graduated from UMass Amherst in 2023 with a degree in voice and chorale conducting and is now a graduate student at the New England Conservatory of Music. UMass choral director Lindsay Pope noted that this achievement is rare, as graduate conducting candidates typically require teaching experience. Tim also directs the Groton Christmas Chorus, a community event for singers ages 6 to 90.
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Sofia Santoro
2024-2025 Nashoba Valley Chorale Emerging Artist
This year’s Emerging Artist is Sofia Santoro.
Sofia, a sophomore at Ithaca College, has been a resident of Groton, Massachusetts since childhood. Her passion for music began with musical theater, but her father’s love for jazz played a significant role in shaping her musical tastes. Growing up she would often hear him play jazz around the house, which naturally drew her to the genre.
"I’m working on a double degree in music and vocal performance with a focus on jazz voice/jazz studies. I'm going into my fourth semester."
Sofia is also part of the Choir, the Jazz Vocal Ensemble, and IC Voicestream, an a cappella group. She has performed in many musical theater productions.
“Music is super important in my life… I'm a singer-songwriter and a classical singer. I’ve done a lot of master classes for classical voice. I get to study with Kim Nazarian who is an adjunct jazz voice professor at Ithaca College. She’s part of the New York Voices with Peter Eldridge, and she is spectacular to work with. I’m excited to be singing a Peter Eldridge arrangement of "Wish You With Me". We're also going to do “What Is This Thing Called Love” by Cole Porter, that's a magical piece. Also “Lovely Day” by Bill Withers and Jerome Kern’s classic "The Way You Look Tonight" arranged by Kirby Shaw.”
We asked Sofia about her musical influences.
“Kim Nazarian comes to mind just because I work with her so much. She's my idol, and it's crazy I get to work with her. Another of my idols is Joni Mitchell. I love Joni Mitchell, I think she does a great job of weaving her stories, connecting life with music, which makes her performances come alive. A lot of people have told me that when they see me singing, I “come alive”. That’s the greatest compliment. I’m also a big fan of Brandi Carlile. She inspired me to be a singer/songwriter. I love folk and pop music, but I also love Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and Billie Holiday.”
When asked to describe the thrill of singing and soloing with a chorale… Sofia said:
“It's one of my favorite things to do. It makes me so happy to be able to have a solo with a big group of voices and being able to just “sing out at full volume” without any amplification. It’s magical. I’m really looking forward to performing with the Nashoba Valley Chorale.”
Shawn McCann, NVS collaborative pianist, said: "I'm really excited that Sofia's going to be singing with us. I love working with her. Even though she’s a student, she’s got a lot of professional skill. Recently, she and I did a Christmas service at my church. We were rehearsing, and we just automatically did the same tag at the end of the song…like musical telepathy. She’s got 'it' and will bring a lot of her jazz stylings to this concert."
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