Steven Sametz Composes ACDA 2011 Brock Commission

Steven Sametz is the 2011 recipient of the American Choral Director Association’s prestigious Raymond W. Brock Memorial Commission. As part of the commission, the Grammy Award-winning ensemble Chanticleer will premiere Dr. Sametz’s Three Mystical Choruses at the ACDA National Conference in Chicago’s Symphony Hall on March 9, 2011.

Three Mystical Choruses is a three movement work that includes sacred text from Christian, Jewish and Hindu-Islamic-Sikh traditions. The movements are titled Niño de Rosas (Child of Roses), En Kelohenu (There is none like our God) and Mein To ere Paas Me (I Am Within You). “My hope is that these pieces will point towards the greatness that choral music invites and that, in some way, may find a place in the long tradition of choral singing that is still very much alive today,” says Sametz.

Chanticleer – based in San Francisco – is known around the world as “an orchestra of voices” for the seamless blend of its twelve male voices ranging from countertenor to bass and its original interpretations of vocal literature, from Renaissance to jazz, and from gospel to venturesome new music. They have been a vital force in the presentation of new music in the US and abroad and have collaborated with Steven Sametz since 1987, when he wrote one of his first major works for them, ¡O llama de amor viva! (A Mystical Vision of St. John of the Cross). Since then, Chanticleer has performed and recorded many of Sametz’s works, including in time of on their Grammy-Award winning “Colors of Love,” and the very popular I Have Had Singing. They most recently premiered and recorded Sametz’s Not an End of Loving (commissioned specially for Chanticleer) and performed an earlier Sametz work commissioned for them, Two Medieval Lyrics, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. 

The Raymond W. Brock Memorial Choral Series was established in 1991 to honor the life and contributions of Raymond W. Brock, who served as Administrative Assistant for ACDA from 1987-1991. Annually, the ACDA Executive Committee will commission a recognized composer to write a choral composition in an effort to perpetuate quality choral repertoire. Funds for this commission will be paid from the Raymond W. Brock Memorial Endowment, a fund established and maintained by the membership of ACDA.

Dr. Sametz has an extensive relationship with the ACDA which includes a sponsorship of the Lehigh Choral Composers’ Forum, a summer course of study designed to mentor emerging choral composers.

He is the founding director of the Lehigh University Choral Composers’ Forum, the Lehigh Choral Union and since 1998 he has served as Artistic Director for the professional a cappella ensemble, The Princeton Singers. He has toured extensively with Lehigh Choral Arts, leading singers from Lehigh throughout Asia, Europe, and the United States. His guest conducting appearances include the Taipei Philharmonic Foundation, the Berkshire Music Festival, the New York Chamber Symphony, and the Netherlands Radio Choir. Sametz holds degrees from Yale University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany.

Sametz has been called “one of America’s most respected choral composers.” His compositions have been heard throughout the world at the Tanglewood, Ravinia, Salzburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Santa Fe music festivals. His in time of appears on the Grammy award-winning CD by Chanticleer, Colors of Love, and his work may be heard on six other Chanticleer CDs. The Princeton Singers has recently released a new recording of Sametz’s compositions entitled I Have Had Singing for international distribution on the Arsis label. Other recordings by the Princeton Singers under Sametz’s direction include Reincarnations, Christmas with the Princeton Singers and Old, New, Borrowed, Blues, a compilation of Sametz’s compositions and arrangements. Four recordings by Lehigh University Choral Arts under Sametz’s direction include Everywhere, a compilation of Lehigh’s touring repertoire on three continents; The Brown and White Album, the debut album of the new Lehigh University Glee Club; Live from Taipei, recorded with the Lehigh University Choir at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taiwan; and Wondrous Love, a selection of Christmas repertoire taken from Lehigh Choral Arts popular Christmas Vespers programs.

Sametz has received commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Connecticut Council on the Arts, and the Santa Fe Music Festival, creating new works for Chanticleer, the Dale Warland Singers, Philadelphia Singers, Pro Arte Chamber Choir, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, Connecticut Choral Artists, Los Angeles Master Chorale, and the King of Thailand. His compositions are published by ECS Publishing, Oxford University Press, Alliance Music, Walton Music, GIA and Steven Sametz Publications. Most recently, Sametz premiered Music’s Music, sung by the LA Master Chorale at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, which received the critical acclaim of being “the evening’s high point…a gorgeous work.”