UB's New Internationally Acclaimed Choral Director Invites Area Singers to Join UB Choruses

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Harold Rosenbaum, the enthusiastic, award-winning new director of the University at Buffalo choruses, invites singers from throughout the Greater Buffalo community to train and perform with the two choral ensembles he will direct at UB.

Rosenbaum is a choral master par excellence whose astonishing professional reputation derives from 25 years as a conductor of world-class choirs and choruses in many venues here and abroad. He is particularly well known in New York City, where he directs seven choirs of critical note, three of which he founded.

His many awards and honors are among the most distinguished in the field of music. He is noted as well for his many choral collaborations with major orchestras and frequently makes performance tours of Europe with his ensembles.

"We're very proud and excited to have attracted as distinguished a choral conductor as Harold to our UB community," said UB Music Department Chair David Felder. "He is a superb musician and unique in his ability to work on all periods of music from the 13th century to world premieres composed yesterday with singers ranging from the dedicated amateur through the fully professional."

Rosenbaum's work at UB will involve the university choir and chorus, two distinct performing groups with different repertoires and different vocal requirements of their members.

"There is room in both groups for many good singers," he said, "and I truly welcome members of the Western New York community, as well as UB students, faculty and staff to enrich the choruses by joining us. Although it will be a diverse group of singers, most of whom haven't performed together before, I have found that when respect is shown for the singers and the music itself, the results are often amazing."

The UB Chorus performs large-scale works like Brahms' Requiem, Mendelssohn's Elijah and Haydn's Creation. Its size is not limited, Rosenbaum said.

The UB Chorus will meet for rehearsals once a week, Thursdays from 7-9:30 p.m. in 250 Baird Hall on the UB North (Amherst) Campus. There are no auditions. Those interested can sign up at the Sept. 10 or 17 rehearsals.

The UB Choir is a smaller group of 30-50 members that requires a higher level of music sight- reading skills and a greater time commitment from its members. It will meet for rehearsal three times a week, from 4-6 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Those wishing to schedule auditions for the choir may call 645-600, ext. 1242.

Rosenbaum said the choir will no doubt include more music majors from UB than does the chorus, but that there is room as well for voices from the community, faculty, staff and the general student body.

"I won't know the choir's exact repertoire until I know what the singers are capable of doing," Rosenbaum said, "but it will include a cross section of Renaissance, Baroque and contemporary music appropriate for a chamber choir."

The UB choral ensembles are scheduled to perform four programs during the 1998-99 season. They also will perform at UB's M(millennium) Minus 1 Festival next spring. The festival program will feature a number of famous invited choral groups, including composer Pierre Boulez' Paris Chorus.

In September, Rosenbaum will direct UB students in a presentation of short vocal works on a Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra program that will feature a performance of Carl Orff's unconventional theatrical tryptich, "Carmina Burana."

Among the vocal performance groups founded by Rosenbaum is New York's Canticum Novum Singers, a choir of international distinction that just celebrated its 25th anniversary. Another is the New York Virtuoso Singers, a critically applauded and much-sought-after professional ensemble of 16 singers known for its unusual contemporary classical choral repertoire.

Both groups have collaborated and performed with major orchestras, among them The New York Philharmonic, The Orchestra of St. Lukes, The American Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonique d'Europe in Paris. They have toured Europe as well, appearing at such venues as Great Britain's Ludlow Festival, the Chester Concert Series, the Cheltenham Fringe Festival and the International Celebrity Series in London's St. Margaret's Church.

Rosenbaum also recently founded the Westchester Oratorio Society, a large chorus that performs master works with a full professional orchestra.

As professor of music and director of choruses at Queens College, he has for 25 years directed the Queens Chorus, a 200-voice choral ensemble with many community members. He serves as music director/conductor of the Hudson Valley Singers and as organist/choir director of South Salem (N.Y.) Presbyterian Church

He has trained choruses for such conductors as Lukas Foss, James Conlon and Sir Charles Mackerras and has conducted his choirs on performance tours of Europe.

Rosenbaum's choirs have several CDs to their credit, including the popular The Orpheus on the CRI label. HLH Music Productions soon will release a series of edited works under the title Harold Rosenbaum Choral Series.