Stephen Sands - ChoirPlace

Personal Information

First Name Stephen
Last Name Sands
Gender Male

Location

Country United States

Musical Information

Musical Activities Singer, Conductor, Voice Teacher
Voice Tenor
Member of Choirs Antioch Chamber Ensemble

More

Website www.AntiochChamberEnsemble.org
About Me Widely regarded as one of the finest professional choral ensembles in the United States, The Antioch Chamber Ensemble is currently celebrating its 16th season of exceptional music-making, having made its debut at the gala opening of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in 1997. Under the leadership of founding Artistic Director Joshua Copeland, the ensemble strives to present as diverse a program as possible of the world’s greatest choral literature, both sacred and secular, and has performed works ranging from Renaissance polyphony to contemporary masterpieces with a core group of ten to twelve of the New York metropolitan area’s finest singers. In 2008, Antioch was awarded first-place honors in the highly prestigious Tolosa International Choral Competition in Spain, establishing them among the top rank of professional choirs in the world. In recent seasons, Antioch has been called “stellar,” “flawless,” “an exceptional group,” and “a spectacular example of what a classical choir should sound like” by the national press.

Antioch’s past performance highlights include feature performances for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, the American Choral Directors Association Eastern National Conference and the Festival des Choeurs Laureats in France. This season, the ensemble makes its debut with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in a program celebrating the work of notorious nobleman and visionary late-Renaissance composer Carlo Gesualdo.

In recent years, Antioch has earned a glowing reputation for its pitch-perfect and expressive interpretation of modern music. In 2010, the ensemble gave the European premiere of Eric Whitacre’s “The City and the Sea,” as well as the world premiere of Bruce Adolphe’s “Of Art and Onions: Homage to Bronzino” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, commissioned by the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. The same year, the group’s second recording, The Passing of the Year (featuring the titular cycle by contemporary composer Jonathan Dove), was released by MSR Classic to universal praise from the industry press, who cited the group’s “flawless blend, excellent intonation, and enthusiastic but sensitive phrasing.” Composers Paul Mealor, Ivo Antognini, Matthew Brown and R. Douglas Helvering have all composed works specifically for Antioch. The ensemble is the recipient of a 2013 grant from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music to produce the first recording of choral works by Brown, a talented emerging composer based in Los Angeles.