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Adam Grossman, Music Director

Celebrating 30 Years with The Master Singers of Lexington

Now in their thirtieth 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 and Pilgrim Churches 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 the group frequently performs with prominent local freelance instrumentalists, it has 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, clarinetist Paulette Bowes, soprano Jean Danton, bassist Pascale Delache-Feldman, Literary Performer Regie Gibson, guitarist John Muratore, cellists Carol and Sam Ou, violinist Frank Powdermaker, saxophonist Kenneth Radnofsky, cellist Rhonda Rider, horn player Jean Rife, English horn player Robert Sheena, pianists Thomas Stumpf and Eric Mazonson, percussionist Robert Schulz, recorder player John Tyson, trumpeter Richard Watson and violists Noriko Futagami and 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, oboist Donna Dreisbach and trumpeter Jeffrey Work.

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 Allen Anderson, William Bolcom, Whitman Brown, Benjamin Cohen, Sara Doncaster, José Elizondo, Marti Epstein, Allen Feinstein, Adam Grossman, Grant Hicks, Rodney Lister, Jonathan Lovenstein, John McDonald, Pamela J. Marshall, Scott Norris, William Pfaff, David Rakowski, Thomas Stumpf, Pasquale Tassone, Patricia Van Ness, Michael Weinstein and Lawrence Wolfe. Other contemporary composers whose works The Master Singers have performed include Paul Caldwell, Hayg Boyadjian, Newell Hendricks, Christopher Malloy, Arvo Pärt, Daniel Pinkham, Ned Rorem, Conrad Susa, Scott Wheeler and Yehudi Wyner.
The Master Singers has initiated annual, free Children's Concerts, which include participation with choruses from the Lexington Public Schools, and have been held at five different schools in Lexington.

In addition to his work with The Master Singers, Adam Grossman is on the faculty of the New England Conservatory Preparatory School, 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, taught at the All Newton Music School, 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 The Planets, also with the BPO. In 2011 he conducted the Institute Chorus at the Warebrook (Vermont) Festival for Contemporary Music, where he had conducted works of Stravinsky, Schifrin and Allen Anderson in three previous seasons. He spent a semester as Artist in Residence and Conductor of the Brandeis University Chorus, conducted the first performance of Abigail Al-Doory's Tonya & Nancy: The Opera , and led the Central Massachusetts Junior District Festival Orchestra.

He has conducted more than fifty premieres, including works by Allen Anderson, William Bolcom, Marti Epstein, Peter Lieberson, Rodney Lister, John McDonald, Joyce Mekeel, Marjorie Merryman, William Pfaff and Michael Weinstein, as well as local premieres by Peter Maxwell Davies, Michael Finnissey and Richard Felciano.

Adam Grossman is also a composer. His works have been performed by the Brockton, Cambridge, Lancaster (Pennsylvania), Newton, Waltham and Wellesley Symphony Orchestras, the Kindred Spirits Orchestra (Ontario), New England Conservatory Youth Repertory Orchestra, New Philharmonia Orchestra, Symphony Pro Musica, North Shore Philharmonic, Northeastern University Concert Band, Tufts University Chorale, the Zamir Chorale of Metropolitan Detroit, the Vocal Arts Ensemble of Ann Arbor, Michigan, The Master Singers of Lexington, and at the 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, New England Conservatory and Brandeis University.

Photo: Steven A. Lewis, 2015

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