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The Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, hosted in Norfolk, Connecticut, is a summer music festival. Set among the Litchfield Hills of the lower Berkshires, the Festival traces its roots to the Battell family, who started hosting summer concerts on the Norfolk town green in the 1880s. Now under the auspices of the [[Yale University School of Music].
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Robbins Battell (1819–1895) was the seventh son of a wealthy Norfolk, CT family. He was a patron of music, as well as, a skilled amateur flutist and composer. After graduating from Yale University in 1839, [1] he returned to Norfolk to manage the family business enterprises, and used his wealth for various musical enterprises. Beginning in the 1880s he financed a week-long series of concerts on the green. This concert series became what is now known as the Norfolk Festival.
Robbins’ daughter, Ellen (1851–1939), continued her father's legacy of bringing music to Norfolk; she and her husband started the Litchfield County Choral Union which continues to perform at the Norfolk Festival to this day. Under Carl and Ellen, Norfolk soon became the first internationally known classical music festival in America. The Stoeckels assumed the entire expense of the concerts which took place on their estate. These concerts rapidly became extravagant affairs with parties and picnics and were among the most popular summer social events in New England. They recruited a 70-piece orchestra of musicians from the New York Philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera, and paid for a special train to transport the instrumentalists to the Litchfield Hills.
In 1906, to accommodate the ever-growing crowds at the festival, the couple built a concert hall known as the Music Shed. They commissioned new works from many of the leading composers of their time and invited them to conduct their own premieres. Sibelius, for example, composed his tone poem The Oceanides for the Stoeckels and conducted it in the Music Shed during his only trip to the United States on June 4, 1915. The autographed manuscript is now in the Music Library at Yale University.
When Ellen Battell Stoeckel died in 1939 with no surviving children, she stipulated in her will that her estate was to be used in perpetuity for the “benefit and development of the School of Music of Yale University and for extending said University’s courses in music, art, and literature.” The Yale Summer School of Music was established in 1941. Since that time, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival has played host to thousands of emerging young professional musicians. Today the Festival offers intensive tuition-free programs each summer to approximately eighty students in chamber music, new music and choral repertoire.[ citation needed ]
Designed by New York architect E.K. Rossiter, the Music Shed existed first as a separate prototype structure modelled after Steinway Hall in New York. A test concert was given in 1904. The success of the experimental hall led to the construction of the Music Shed which was built for the Litchfield County Choral Union and opened in 1906. The Shed had to be enlarged due to the number of Choir and audience members, and after an expansion in 1910, it could accommodate a Choir of 425 and an audience of 1,500. The Shed is built of cedar and lined with redwood.[ citation needed ]
Norfolk is a town in Litchfield County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 1,588 at the 2020 census. The town is part of the Northwest Hills Planning Region. The urban center of the town is the Norfolk census-designated place, with a population of 553 at the 2010 census.
Tanglewood is a music venue and festival in the towns of Lenox and Stockbridge in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. It has been the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1937. Tanglewood is also home to three music schools: the Tanglewood Music Center, Tanglewood Learning Center, and the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. Besides classical music, Tanglewood hosts the Festival of Contemporary Music, jazz and popular artists, concerts, and frequent appearances by James Taylor, John Williams, and the Boston Pops Orchestra.
Robert Lawson Shaw was an American conductor most famous for his work with his namesake Chorale, with the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. He was known for drawing public attention to choral music through his wide-ranging influence and mentoring of younger conductors, the high standard of his recordings, his support for racial integration in his choruses, and his support for modern music, winning many awards throughout his career.
Westminster Choir College (WCC) is a historic conservatory of music currently operating on the campus of Rider University in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Rider's College of Arts and Sciences, the college under which the historic institution has been reorganized, consists of Westminster Choir College as well as three additional schools.
Jeffrey Douma is the Director of the Yale Glee Club and the Marshall Bartholomew Professor in the Practice of Choral Music at the Yale School of Music. He is the founding Director of the Yale Choral Artists and serves as Artistic Director of the Yale International Choral Festival.
Glasgow's City Halls and Old Fruitmarket is a concert hall and former market located on Candleriggs, in the Merchant City, Glasgow, Scotland.
The Oceanides, Op. 73, is a single-movement tone poem for orchestra written from 1913 to 1914 by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. The piece, which refers to the nymphs in Greek mythology who inhabited the Mediterranean Sea, premiered on 4 June 1914 at the Norfolk Music Festival in Connecticut with Sibelius conducting. Praised upon its premiere as "the finest evocation of the sea ... ever ... produced in music", the tone poem, in D major, consists of two subjects, said to represent the playful activity of the nymphs and the majesty of the ocean, respectively. Sibelius gradually develops this material over three informal stages: first, a placid ocean; second, a gathering storm; and third, a thunderous wave-crash climax. As the tempest subsides, a final chord sounds, symbolizing the mighty power and limitless expanse of the sea.
The University of Louisville Cardinal Singers is a choir consisting of between 29 and 40 members, and is the most selective choral ensemble at the University of Louisville in Kentucky.
Roman Hurko is a New York based composer who specializes in Byzantine Rite Music.
The Canadian Chamber Choir 's mission is to build community through choral singing. The CCC is a national ensemble that provides a professional choral environment for Canadian singers, conductors and composers, and travels across Canada promoting Canadian choral music. Under the artistic direction of Julia Davids, the CCC convenes in different regions of Canada twice a year, offering concerts and mentoring choral practitioners of all ages and stages.
Battell Chapel is the largest chapel of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Built in 1874–76, it was funded primarily with gifts from Joseph Battell and others of his family. Succeeding two previous chapel buildings on Yale's Old Campus, it provided space for daily chapel services, which were mandatory for Yale College students until 1926. Together with Durfee Hall and Farnam Hall, the chapel was part of a program begun in the 1870s to build up the perimeter of Old Campus and separate it from the rest of the city. These three buildings, all by the same architect, were among the first at Yale to be named for donors rather than function, location, or legislative funding.
Keith L. Wilson was an American classical musician. He was a clarinetist, teacher, and conductor.
Gustave Jakob Stoeckel was a longtime music instructor and college organist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Simon Carrington is an English conductor, singer and double bass player. He was a founding member and member for 25 years of the Grammy Award-winning vocal ensemble the King's Singers; he subsequently worked for 15 years in the United States and now divides his time between London and southwest France. He speaks French and German and holds British and American citizenship. He is father of the British "music comedian" and cello player Rebecca Carrington.
Ehrick Kensett Rossiter was an American architect known for the country homes he designed.
The Haystack Mountain Tower is a stone observation tower at the summit of 1,680-foot (510 m) Haystack Mountain in Haystack Mountain State Park, Norfolk, Connecticut. Built in 1929, the tower and the land on which it stands were donated by Ellen Battell Stoeckel. The tower provides views of three states and Long Island Sound. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993.
Bernie Sherlock is an Irish choral conductor, adjudicator, teacher, and lecturer in music.
Harry Benjamin Jepson was an American organist and composer and the first University Organist of Yale University.
The Norfolk Historic District encompasses the historic civic and commercial center of Norfolk, Connecticut. Centered around a triangular green at the junction of United States Route 44 and Connecticut Route 272, it is a well-preserved late 19th to early 20th-century town center, with a number of architecturally distinctive buildings and structures. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
The Robbins Stoeckel House is a historic house on Litchfield Road in Norfolk, Connecticut. Built in 1907, it is a distinctive design of the architect Alfredo S.G. Taylor, featuring some of his signature elements. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.