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Now in their thirteenth season together, Adam Grossman and The Master Singers have continued and expanded their joint mission of bringing superb choral music to Lexington , becoming well known for eclectic programs and stylistic versatility. While continuing to perform staples of the choral repertoire by composers including Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Brahms and Britten, The Master Singers has also sought to enliven their concerts with inventive programming, expanding the repertoire with less familiar works and with new music.
In addition to performing at First Parish Church, and at Follen Church in Lexington, The Master Singers has sung in Boston at Old South Meeting House, at Boston College, on faculty recitals at Williams Hall and Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory of Music and in Bedford at the First Parish Unitarian Church. While we frequently perform with prominent local freelance instrumentalists, we have also performed with the Lexington Symphony in Cary Hall and at the Museum of Our National Heritage and with the Boston Classical Orchestra at Faneuil Hall in Boston.
Since 1996, The Master Singers has performed in an innovative series of collaborative concerts, sharing programs with some of the area's most prominent instrumentalists, including the Boston Composer's String Quartet, the Massachusetts Flute Choir, trombonist Darren Acosta, guitarist John Muratore, violinist Frank Powdermaker, saxophonist Kenneth Radnofsky, horn player Jean Rife, english horn player Robert Sheena, pianists Thomas Stumpf and Eric Mazonson, recorder player John Tyson and violist Scott Woolweaver. Other soloists who have appeared with The Master Singers include singers Jeanine Bowman, Diana Cole, Robert Honeysucker, Mark Kagan, Margaret O'Keefe and Epp Sonin, and oboist Donna Dreisbach and trumpeters Jeffrey Work and Richard Watson.
While concerts always include works by established composers, The Master Singers has shown a special interest in new works, especially from local composers. The Master Singers has commissioned and premiered new works by Whitman Brown, Sara Doncaster, Adam Grossman, Rodney Lister, Jonathan Lovenstein, John McDonald, Pamela J. Marshall, Scott Norris, William Pfaff, Thomas Stumpf, Pasquale Tassone, and Michael Weinstein. The Master Singers has also commissioned works for Pops concerts by Benjamin Cohen and Allen Feinstein. Other contemporary composers whose works The Master Singers have performed include William Bolcom, Paul Caldwell, Newell Hendricks, Christopher Malloy, Arvo Pärt, Daniel Pinkham, Ned Rorem, Scott Wheeler and Yehudi Wyner.
The Master Singers has initiated annual, free Children's Concerts which now include participation with choruses from the Lexington Public Schools, and have been held at four different schools in Lexington.
In addition to his work with The Master Singers, Adam Grossman is on the faculty of the All Newton Music School and the New England Conservatory Preparatory Department, where he conducts the Junior Repertory Orchestra. He is the former Music Director of the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra and conductor of The Boston Cecilia Chamber Singers, and has been guest conductor for The Boston Cecilia, Dinosaur Annex New Music Ensemble, the Lexington Sinfonietta, Symphony by the Sea, Longy Summer Orchestra and Youth and Pops concerts with the Newton , Wellesley , and the New Philharmonia Orchestras. His work with Boston 's Chorus Pro Musica includes preparing Verdi's Requiem for performance with the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as conducting the off-stage chorus in Holst's Planets , also with the BPO. He has appeared three times at the Warebrook ( Vermont ) Festival for Contemporary Music, and in the fall of 1999 was Artist in Residence and Conductor of the Brandeis University Chorus. In 2006 he conducted the first performance of Abigail Al-Doory's Tonya & Nancy: The Opera . In 2007 he conducted the Central Massachusetts Junior District Festival Orchestra.
He has conducted more than forty premieres, including works by Allen Anderson, Peter Lieberson, Rodney Lister, John McDonald, Joyce Mekeel and Marjorie Merryman, as well as eleven works of graduate composers at Brandeis University , and local premieres by Peter Maxwell Davies, Michael Finnissey and Richard Felciano.
Adam Grossman is also a composer. His works have been performed by the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra, the Newton, Wellesley, Brockton and Waltham Symphony Orchestras, the Symphony pro Musica, the New England Conservatory Youth Repertory Orchestra, the North Shore Philharmonic, the New Philharmonia Orchestra, the Northeastern University Concert Band, the Tufts University Chorale, the Zamir Chorale of Metropolitan Detroit, the Vocal Arts Ensemble of Ann Arbor, Michigan, The Master Singers and at the 2000 Massachusetts Music Teachers Association conference, Crosscurrents concerts, the New School of Music, the All Newton Music School, the Newton Free Library, Franklin and Marshall College, the New England Conservatory and at Brandeis University. |