The Yale Alumni Chorus returned to our roots in February 2006 with a visit to England, where the tradition of singing glees began. Many Chorus members sang with the Yale Glee Club as undergraduates so this journey held particular poignancy for us.
We brought our own traditions of alumni singing and of cultural exchange through music as ambassadors of song by performing a joint concert in Ely (near Cambridge) with the Cambridge University Musical Society (CUMS) and its alumni along with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra and members of the Philharmonia of Russia. The concert at Ely Cathedral, sponsored by the Yale Alumni Chorus to benefit the formation of a CUMS alumni association, featured four international conductors including Stephen Cleobury and Sir David Willcocks of CUMS, Constantine Orbelian of the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, and our own Jeffrey Douma, also conductor of the Yale Glee Club.
A dinner with American, British, and Russian musicians at King’s Hall in Cambridge proved to be a highlight of the tour with a magical evening of singing, cultural exchange, and fellowship in a magnificent and historic setting.
Mark Dollhopf, Sir David Willcocks, Jeff Douma and Constantine Orbelian after rehearsal in Cambridge
We then traveled to London to perform at the city’s standout concert hall, the Barbican, with new friends from CUMS and well-established friends from the Philharmonia of Russia. The concert featured Russian opera star Dmitri Hvorostovsky in a reprise of our 2003 performance at the Kremlin State Palace of Russian Patriotic Songs of the Great War.
Concert at the Barbican
Dmitri Hvorostovsky