Chorworks is a non-profit organization founded in 2005 to explore the rich diversity of choral music. Through concerts and educational workshops, Chorworks offers singers and conductors the opportunity o study and perform choral masterpieces, with an emphasis on the 16th and 17th centuries. Our world-class faculty is drawn from several premier music ensembles, including Anonymous 4, Magnificat, and the Tallis Scholars.
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Young Artists Program 2019
Chorworks Young Artists Program perform French sacred music in Goodson Chapel, Duke Divinity School.
Twelve young graduate musicians assembled at Duke University to spend a week studying and singing beautiful – but all too little known – renaissance and baroque sacred music from France.
Organized by Chorworks, directed by Duke Chapel Music’s Dr. Philip Cave, the workshop was designed to explore this repertoire, and encourage the singers to discover the music and develop the skills necessary to perform music from the 16th and 17th centuries.
A week of intensive rehearsals culminated in three concerts, each representing a different period and musical styles. The first consisted of a cappella renaissance motets by 15th and 16th century composers including Pierre de la Rue, Jean Mouton, Antoine Brumel, Jean L’Heritier, Pierre de Manchicourt, and Eustache Du Caurroy.
A favorite genre of French baroque composers was the small-scale “petit motet” (little motet), often composed for solo, or a few voices, and continuo. The second concert featured works by baroque composers Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Michel-Richard De Lalande, André Campra and Jean-Philippe Rameau, providing the Young Artists with repertoire giving them more soloistic opportunities.
The final concert consisted of larger scale woks with soloists, chorus, accompanied by an orchestra of period instruments. Included in the program was the first performance in modern times of De Lalande’s psalm motet Quemadmodum desiderat cervus (Like as the hart desires the waterbrooks), which had been specially edited from the original manuscripts by one of the YAP singers and Duke Chapel staff-singer Henry Branson.
Participants in the program included former students from Furman and East Carolina Universities, and a musicology student at Duke.
Key Program Features
• During the course of a week-long summer workshop, participants will have the opportunity to receive group tuition, individual mentoring and masterclasses from distinguished faculty.
• Each year will focus on a different theme: in 2020, we will study the music of Claudio Monteverdi. Sacred music will include works from his last great collection of sacred music, Selva morale e spirituale, published in 1641. Secular music will be drawn from his eight books of madrigals.
• Music will be chosen to provide opportunities for choral singing, as well as solo and small-scale consort performance.
• There will be informal performances during the week, culminating in two final concerts with period instrumental ensemble.
What Are The Benefits?
• In addition to the benefits described above, participants will receive a high-quality audio/video recording of the concerts, and scores of all music performed.
• We plan to invite selected singers to participate in other events during the year. Duke Chapel runs a series of Bach Cantata concerts, and young artists of special merit will be invited to perform in some of these high-profile events.
• Finally, we hope that the Emerging Artists Program will create a network of alumni who are performing, recording and touring with professional groups.
Faculty
The program is led by Dr. Philip Cave, associate conductor of Duke Chapel Music and director of the English early music ensemble Magnificat.
“Chorworks has been presenting early music workshops for the last 12 years, and in association with Duke University Chapel, we want to attract serious students to explore great music. I will be directing the program, joined by vocal and instrumental colleagues who will share presentations and practica on performance practice, on Monteverdi, and learning more about the historical context of his music.”
He is joined by Dr. Tony Boutté, Professor of Music at Sam Houston State University (Texas), and by Dr. Roseen Giles, Assistant Professor of Musicology at Duke University.
Bios
Philip Cave
With an international reputation as a singer and conductor, Philip Cave’s career began as a chorister at the age of seven, followed by musical studies at Oxford University with Simon Preston and David Wulstan. In 1991, he founded Magnificat, which has since attracted much critical acclaim for its vibrant performances and recordings.
Philip was a founding member of the Tallis Scholars, with whom he gave over 400 performances, and he has performed, toured and recorded with the Hilliard Ensemble, The Sixteen, the Choir of the English Consort, the King’s Consort, the Cardinall’s Musick, and the Choirs of Christ Church and New College, Oxford.
As a soloist, he has performed under many celebrated conductors including Leonard Bernstein and Sir Roger Norrington, at venues including the Beethovenhalle in Bonn and the Sydney Opera House. He has performed at the BBC Promenade Concerts in London, and has shared the concert platform with many distinguished musicians, including Sir Peter Pears, Sting and Sir Paul McCartney.
Philip was a joint recipient (with Sally Dunkley) of the American Musicological Society’s Greenberg Award for work on Philippe Rogier’s music; he received the Byrne Award from the London Handel Society, and is an Honorary Fellow of London’s Academy of St Cecilia. Now based in the USA, Philip directs several choral ensembles at Duke University Chapel and Divinity School, and he is Executive Director of Chorworks, a non-profit organization that provides singers and conductors with opportunities to study and perform choral music with emphasis on works from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
He has worked with both Tony Boutté and Roseen Giles on several projects.
Tony Boutté (tenor)
Tony was described in a recent issue of Opera News as “possessed of a radiant, communicative tenor." A native of Louisiana, Tony made his operatic debut as Orfeo in Stephen Wadsworth’s groundbreaking Monteverdi Cycle with Skylight Opera. He has sung extensively, here and abroad, including New York, London, Paris and Los Angeles, with his Carnegie Hall debut coming in 2006 singing Handel’s Messiah.
Tony has regularly appeared with various top-notch ensembles, including Les Arts Florissants, Tafelmusik, Les Talens Lyriques, Opera Lafayette, Ars Lyrica Houston, Washington Bach Consort, New York Collegium, Les Violons du Roy, Boston Baroque, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and Musica Angelica. In addition, Tony has been fortunate enough to perform in several prestigious venues, including Cité de la Musique (Paris), Mozarteum’s Großer Saal (Vienna), Opera Royal de Versailles (France), Lincoln Center (NYC), Kennedy Center (DC), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC), Washington National Cathedral (DC) and Walt Disney Hall (LA). Tony’s festival appearances include Aspen Music Festival (USA), Bard Festival (USA), Schleswig- Holstien (Germany), Settembre Musica Torino (Italy), Salzburger Pfingstfestspiele (Austria), Aldeburgh Festival (UK), Versailles Festival (France) and Tage Alte Muzik Regensburg (Germany).
An active recording artist, Tony has an extensive catalog of over 20 discs, including works by Lully, Handel and Bach, as well as multiple world premier recordings. Recent releases include Fauré songs (Edition Peters Sounds) and music of Boismortier (Centaur) with Arcanum Ensemble. A recent review of the Fauré disc by the The Guardian (London) noted that Tony sang “with exhilarating passion.” His numerous recordings and performances of contemporary works include John Eaton’s Benjamin Button (Symphony Space), Arjuna’s Dilemma by Douglas Cuomo (BAM), Michael Gordon’s Chaos, Betsy Jolas’ Motet III, Bang on a Can’s Carbon Copy Building and In the Penal Colony by Philip Glass.
Tony holds a BA from Louisiana Tech University, an MM from Eastman School of Music, and a DMA from University of Maryland. He also pursued advanced studies at the Britten-Pears School (Aldeburgh, UK) where he coached many works by Benjamin Britten with the late tenor, Sir Peter Pears. Tony is currently Full Professor of Music at Sam Houston State University (Texas). In addition, Tony co-directs ARCANUM, a baroque ensemble now based in Houston, and is artistic director of New American Voices, an initiative created to champion and perform new American works for voice through the collaboration of singer and composer.
One of Tony’s most recent successes was as the protagonist in Douglas Cuomo’s one-man opera Savage Winter, presented by the Next Wave Festival at Brooklyn Academy of Music 2018. Opera News (Feb. 2019) called it “a heroic performance.” For more information on Tony and his upcoming performances, visit www.tonyboutte.com.
Roseen Giles
Roseen is a musicologist with a specialty in early modern musical culture; she is also the curator of DUMIC (Duke University Musical Instrument Collections). In her research she examines the aesthetic, professional, and personal relationships between poets and musicians of the Italian Baroque.
Her monograph (in progress)—provisionally titled The Sound of the Marvellous: Monteverdi and the Lyric—contributes to the intertwined histories of music and literature by arguing that the controversial experiments of seventeenth-century poets had a profound influence on techniques in musical composition, most notably in the works of Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643). She has published essays on music and philosophy in the Renaissance, memory and orality in the notation of medieval music, and the relationship between music and devotional practice in the seventeenth century.
She is currently preparing an edition of Alessandro Grandi's Madrigali Concertati (1615 and 1622) for the composer's Opera Omnia published by the American Institute of Musicology. And active baroque flautist, she also performs regularly in both orchestral and chamber settings.