Seton Hill U. Hosts Pennsylvania Collegiate Choral Festival
Latrobe Native and Internationally Renowned Conductor Andrew Clark Leads Concert
Seton Hill University’s Music Program will host the annual Pennsylvania Collegiate Choral Festival February 9-11. One-hundred thirty singers representing 13 colleges and universities across Pennsylvania will gather for two days of rehearsals. The festival will conclude on Saturday, February 11, at 1:30 p.m. with a concert in the Carol Ann Reichgut Concert Hall on the main floor of the Seton Hill University Performing Arts Center located at the corner at 100 Harrison Avenue in Greensburg, Pa. The concert is free and open to the public. For additional information, please contact Marvin Huls, associate professor, music, at 724-552-2906.
The concert, under the director of guest conductor Andrew Clark, will consist of music by Pennsylvania composers and arrangers, including Samuel Barber, Robert Paige, Carson Coonan and Nancy Galbraith.
A Latrobe native, Clark is the director of Choral Activities at Harvard University and oversees the choral program of six faculty-directed choruses with over 500 singers and serves as conductor of the Harvard Glee Club, the Radcliffe Choral Society and the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum. He is also artistic director of the Providence Singers, an award-winning choral arts organization earning critical praise for compelling and innovative concerts, dynamic community engagement programs and distinctive organizational partnerships. Prior to his appointment at Harvard, Clark was director of Choral Activities at Tufts University and previously served as music director of the Worcester Chorus, chorus master and assistant conductor of Opera Boston, associate conductor of the Boston Pops Esplanade Chorus and assistant conductor of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh, the chorus of the Pittsburgh Symphony. Clark has led ensembles in prominent venues including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Cathédrale Notre Dame de Paris, Stephansdom in Vienna, Boston’s Symphony Hall, Mechanics Hall and throughout Europe and North America. He has collaborated with the Pittsburgh and New Haven Symphonies, the Rhode Island Philharmonic, the Kronos Quartet, and the Dave Brubeck Quartet and has performed on NBC’s “Today” show. Clark earned his Bachelor of Music from Wake Forest University and his Master of Music from Carnegie Mellon University. He is currently a doctoral candidate at Boston University. He studied with Grammy-award winning conductor Robert Page and has been recognized by Chorus America as one of the country’s most promising conductors.
The Pennsylvania Collegiate Choral Festival has been offered annually for over 50 years by a consortium of member institutions. Each fall, the group creates a Festival Honor Chorus experience for students under the guidance of a nationally recognized conductor and pedagogue. The result is an artistic and educational experience for students that most of universities could not mount individually. The Festival also benefits individual directors as they observe rehearsals, learn new repertoire and techniques and share ideas and repertoire in directors’ meetings.
Venue Information: The Pennsylvania Collegiate Choral Festival will be held in the Carol Ann Reichgut Concert Hall in Seton Hill’s Performing Arts Center, 100 Harrison Avenue, Greensburg, Pa. The Performing Arts Center is a fully accessible and climate-controlled facility. Parking is available in four nearby Greensburg parking areas: the Bell Parking Garage on North Otterman Street (across the street from the Performing Arts Center), the Hellman-Ghrist lot on North Main Street, the Albert Grillo lot on Seton Hill Drive, and the Wib Albright lot off West Otterman Street.
Since its founding, the study of music has been an integral part of the Seton Hill experience. The Music Program at Seton Hill University seeks to educate musicians who will think and act critically, creatively, and ethically, and who are prepared to meet the challenges and opportunities for careers in music in the twenty-first century.