The Album Choir
After being inspired by a year of choral excellence with the Madison Singers, I felt the need to compose an "album's worth" of original choral music. Throughout the 2017 summer, I wrote ten pieces for a cappella SATB choir, resulting in 54 pages of sheet music, and roughly 30 minutes of audio. However, writing the music hardly scratched the surface of my vision for this project -- I also wanted a high-quality recording of this music performed by the best choir singers that JMU has to offer. After organizing a squad of twenty incredible singers, and finding a music director to conduct and lead the group in rehearsals, it was time to go. However, given the ludicrous schedules of the average JMU music student, finding a time to rehearse was almost impossible. We were only able to meet two times between August of 2017 and April of 2018 before the recording the album, and the music director could only make it to one of the rehearsals. Somehow, against all odds, and even with some of the members having to sight-read on the night of recording, we managed to record all ten tracks in just two hours -- a heroic feat to say the least. What you'll hear on the audio tracks located on this page is the result of that recording session, and the result of JMU's finest singers coming together amidst a whirlwind of busy schedules to create beautiful music. Now, these recordings are by no means perfect, but they show how much potential lies within this music if more time and preparation were available. I cannot thank my choir enough, and I will list all the members involved below. We all hope you enjoy!
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Music Director: Dr. Bryce Hayes
Choir Members:
- Soprano: *Lindsey Bross, Annemarie Cartwright, *Kate Gibson, *Brenna McFarland, *Monica Slater
- Alto: *Ellen Atwood, *Darby Clinard, Kara Levchenko, *Isabella Valdes, *Emily Veramessa, *Emily Wylie
- Tenor: Sam Allen, Nick Branson, *Aidan Everett, *Josh Fisher, Justin Long
- Bass: *Peter Barber, *Scott Clark, *Joel Clemens, *Alton Peters, *Sterling Webster
Recording Engineer: Lexington Bowler
Rehearsal Accompanists: Dr. Tonya Menard and Ellen Atwood
Place of Recording: Emmanuel Episcopal
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*Denotes members who are on recording