Rehearsals:

The rehearsal schedule is following this successful format:

·Mondays at 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM with a break.

·The first rehearsal begins on the first Monday after Labor Day, Sept. 12, 2011 for the first concert of the season, Nov. 27.

·The rehearsals resume on the first Monday after Martin Luther King Day for the second concert of the season in May.

·The rehearsals are at the First Church of Christ, 12 South Main St., West Hartford, CT 06107 in the Choral Room on Floor 2. Park in the rear and take the elevator inside the parking lot entrance to floor 2, or walk the stairway.

---A note of reminder to participants: promptness at rehearsals and for the performances is important.

Concerts:

Our Next Concert: Sunday Nov. 27 at 3:00 PM held in Hubbard Hall of St. John's Episcopal Church, 679 Farmington Ave, W. Htfd.

About Our Director... Fred North II (on Sabbatical)

Fred C. North II, is descended from an old central CT family. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1962-1966. He was active in the 50 voice UNC Varsity Men's Glee Club. At the end of his senior year they toured Europe, winning a prize in international competition.

Since then, Fred has directed and/or accompanied a variety of church choirs. He has also been a singing member of several vocal ensembles. He was Director of Music Ministries at the First Church of Christ in Simsbury and is not Director of Music at Christ Church in Coventry.

Having moved from Virginia, Fred and his wife Carol had purchased Northington House, his grandparents home, fulfilling their dream of returning the estate in new Britain to the North family. They recently relocated to Coventry, closer to family and work.

About Our Acting Director... Nathaniel Baker

Nathaniel Baker, 25, began his formal piano training at the age of 7. His subsequent rise to musical maturity has seen the beginnings of a rich and varied career as a solo performer, instructor, choir director and music theorist. In the spring of 2010, Nathaniel received his Bachelors in Music from The Hartt School with majors in both Piano Performance and Music Theory. He has studied privately with Luiz de Moura-Castro, Benita Rose and Margarita Nuller and participated in master classes with Paul Badura-Skoda, Diane Andersen, Dmitry Rachmanov, Watson Morrison and Awadagin Pratt, among others.
Nathaniel has played in venues throughout Connecticut, including the Connecticut Governor’s Residence, the Mark Twain House, Eastern Connecticut State University’s Shafer Auditorium and Von Der Mehden Recital Hall at the University of Connecticut. He has also performed at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, as well as at music festivals in Spain and Portugal. At the end of this month he will be performing at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Belo Horizonte, Brazil’s fourth largest city. Nathaniel has appeared as a soloist with the Willimantic Orchestra and the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Youth Orchestra. This past spring, he placed third in the Young Artist Piano Competition sponsored by the Connecticut State Music Teachers’ Association.
The past few years have seen the development of another one of Nathaniel’s passions: poetry. Nathaniel’s unique blend of dramatic poetry recitation and music has found an audience throughout Connecticut and Massachussetts. In July 2010, this integral aspect of Nathaniel’s career assumed international dimensions when he gave an extensive recitation at the Amalfi Coast Music Festival in Italy.
Nathaniel’s work as an accompanist and choir director has been nearly as far-ranging as his performing. He has been employed as an accompanist for roughly 30 different operatic and musical productions. Nathaniel has spent the past five years working as a rehearsal accompanist for the Connecticut Lyric Opera, now Connecticut’s largest opera company. He recently accompanied soprano Jurate Svedaite in a performance at a fund-raiser for Senatorial candidate and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. Nathaniel is presently the Director of The Choral Club of Hartford which, with 104 straight seasons, is one of America’s longest continuously running choral groups. He is also the Director of Music at St. Monica’s Episcopal Church in Hartford, a position preceded by more than a decade of work as a church musician, including positions as Director of Music at the First Church of Christ in Canterbury, CT and as pianist for the Unitarian-Universalist Covenant of Norwich. Nathaniel has also acted as Music Director for two productions of Smoky Joe’s Café, a rock-musical featuring hits by Lieber and Stoller and for one production of Connecticut native Jason Robert Brown’s musical, The Last Five Years.

About our Accompanist... Matthew Burry

Matthew Burry studied music theory, classical guitar, piano, and composition at the Hartt School, graduating in 2010. He maintains an active performance schedule on both piano and guitar and is Assistant Director of Music at Emanuel Lutheran in Manchester.

ChoralClubOfHartford.org