2012 Alfred Nash Patterson Grants

Choral Arts New England held its 28th annual awards ceremony on October 14, 2012 at the Commonwealth Club in Boston, where the following grants were presented. (Concert dates listed are subject to change within the current season.)

• Back Bay Chorale, Boston Mass., for the premiere on March 17, 2013 of Anything Can Happen, a new choral work by Mohammed Fairouz, which includes poetry by Seamus Heaney and excerpts from the original Arabic-language gospel of Jesus.
• Bella Voce Women’s Chorus of Vermont, Essex Junction, Vt., for a concert on May 18, 2013 celebrating spirituals sung by those following the Underground Railroad through Vermont.
• Blue Heron Renaissance Choir, Auburndale, Mass., a four-year grant to support recording the Peterhouse Partbooks, the largest and most important extant source of pre-Reformation English sacred music.
• Choral Art Society, Portland, Maine, for Vidimus Stellam, a commissioned work for choir and brass performed on December 1 and 2, 2012 in Portland.
• Counterpoint, Montpelier, Vt., to support high school ensemble workshops on choral singing in spring 2013 that will be professionally video-recorded.
• Greater Middletown Chorale, Middletown, Conn., for performance on April 28, 2013 of Letter from Italy, 1944: War’s End, a large-scale choral-theatrical work by Sarah Meneely-Kyder based on the life of a young physician and his family haunted by war.
• Greater New Haven Community Chorus, New Haven, Conn., for a commissioned work to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the chorus.
• Lorelei Ensemble, Cambridge, Mass., to commission two works for eight women’s voices from emerging composers employing multimedia and electronic music and featuring elements of dance, video, lighting, and amplified voices. Performances will be May 10 and 12, 2013.
• New Hampshire Master Chorale, Plymouth, NH, to support a commission on themes of Latin America and Spain to be performed on November 16–18, 2012.
• Treble Chorus of New England, North Andover, Mass., to support hiring instrumentalists for the chorus’s annual holiday concert on December 15, 2012.
• The Vermont Choral Union, Essex Junction, Vt., to support travel and other expenses for a series of performances of primarily a cappella choral music in communities throughout Vermont.