Community Corner
Bryn Mawr Renaissance Choir
The Bryn Mawr Renaissance Choir is featuring its new music
director, John Bailey, at its first regular concert of the season on November 24,
2013 at 7:00 pm in the Thomas Great Hall of Bryn Mawr College. The performance is free and open to the
public. The concert also honors Ted
Handy, who conducted the Renaissance Choir for more than 40 years before passing
away earlier this year.
The 28-voice chamber group specializes in singing sacred and
secular gems composed between 1300 and 1600 during the European Renaissance
era. Performing without instrumental accompaniment, the a cappella group will enchant the audience with selections ranging from a Kyrie and Ave Maria by Josquin de Pres to the more modern sound of William Byrd’s
Justorum Anime and When David Heard by Thomas Tompkins.
The newly appointed music director of the Bryn Mawr Renaissance
Choir, Bailey is a long-time faculty member of the Amherst Early Music Festival
and is completing his PhD in musicology at the University of Pennsylvania. As a harpsichordist, he has appeared in
recitals with soprano Julianne Baird, and as a concerto soloist with baroque
orchestra Tempesta di Mare and on the Philadelphia Bach Festival series. He also serves as organist at the
Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral, teaches in the Intellectual Heritage program
at Temple University,
and accompanies the Chorale and Chamber Singers of Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges.
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Based in the cathedral-like Thomas Great Hall at Bryn Mawr
College, the Renaissance
Choir is celebrating a full half century of continuous music-making. Following its very first concert on Nov. 1,
1963, the vocal chamber group has been performing several concerts annually for
the past five decades. Comprised of
students and professors from nearby colleges as well as experienced singers
from surrounding communities, the Bryn Mawr Renaissance Choir is supported by
the Ted Handy Fund for the Support of Renaissance Music, and contributions can
be made through Dianne Johnson, director of gift planning in the development
office of Bryn Mawr College.
