Chamber Music and Ensembles

NEC ORCHESTRAS

Orchestral training has been a fundamental part of a New England Conservatory education since the 1880s. Today the program features three full orchestras and an unconducted chamber orchestra. The NEC Orchestras play about 20 concerts per year in addition to two operas. Repertoire ranges from the Baroque to contemporary with emphasis on learning a wide range of styles. Rehearsals and concerts are led by Hugh Wolff, the Director of Orchestras, David Loebel, the Associate Director of Orchestras, Donald Palma, the Artistic Director of the Chamber Orchestra, and eminent guest conductors. Occasional reading rehearsals are led by visiting conductors from the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Sectionals are led by Boston Symphony Orchestra and top local freelance musicians.

 

NEC WIND ENSEMBLE

NEC Wind Ensemble provides wind, brass and percussion students the opportunity to explore and perform music from the Renaissance through the present day. This experience in a wide range of repertoire prepares the aspiring artist for today’s musically diverse professional world. The NECWE has created music for its mission, ranging from new editions of Gabrieli to commissioning and premiering new works by Pulitzer Prize composers Michael Colgrass, John Harbison, Gunther Schuller and David Lang, as well as Michael Gandolfi, André Previn, Sir Michael Tippett and Daniel Pinkham. In addition to its concert series in Jordan Hall, the ensemble has also appeared at Carnegie Hall and the National Arts Center of Canada. Each year faculty and students appear as soloists in concert with the Wind Ensemble. Through performances and recordings the Wind Ensemble has established a reputation as one of the country’s premier wind ensembles.

 

NEC SYMPHONIC WINDS

NEC Symphonic Winds performs woodwind, brass, and percussion repertoire from the Renaissance through the present day for octet to full wind ensemble. Important works that are sometimes neglected because of unusual instrumentation form an integral part of four annual Jordan Hall concerts. Symphonic Winds also reads standard orchestral repertoire that serves to improve members’ ensemble skills.

 

NEC SYMPHONIC CHOIR

The NEC Symphonic Choir is the Conservatory’s resident community chorus. Ranging from 80 to 90 members and open to all students, regardless of major and year, as well as community members by audition, this ensemble offers its musicians the opportunity to perform music from all styles and periods of choral literature, extending beyond traditional Western masterpieces to the music of non-European cultures. The Symphonic Choir collaborates with NEC’s large instrumental ensembles, as well as with ensembles in greater Boston, and gives its concerts in NEC’s Jordan Hall.

 

The NEC Chamber Singers is an auditioned ensemble, open to all majors at NEC, of 24 to 32 musicians who perform challenging works from all style periods, with a particular emphasis on 19th- to 21st-century a cappella works. The choir rehearses three times a week and experiences choral music-making in an intimate ensemble setting, typically in the round. Each NEC Chamber Singer is a musician seeking to understand the principles and nuance of superior choral artistry so that they may be prepared for professional opportunities and expectations outside of the Conservatory. The choristers diligently prepare their music outside of scheduled rehearsals which makes the brief time spent together musically invaluable. The ensemble typically performs eight to 10 times each academic year: on campus in the Conservatory’s Jordan Hall and at off-campus venues in and around Boston.

 

OPERA STUDIES

Undergraduate Opera Studio

The Undergraduate Opera Studio (UGOS) offers an introduction to performance skills in opera and lyric theatre and the discipline of being a professional singer.

UGOS is an annually auditioned ensemble, which is open to undergraduate voice students who have passed their first year promotional. Students who are admitted to the performance ensemble of UGOS will have musical coachings and stagings culminating in a scenes program in the first semester and a complete one-act or full opera in the second semester. Prerequisite: VC 195 and instructor’s permission. Students may register for 1 credit or 0 credit. Acting and Stage Craft, Learning the Opera Score, and Aria and Audition Class (OPERA 431, 440, and 441) are co-requisites by advisement.

 

Graduate Opera Studies

NEC offers a comprehensive opera training program that provides musical coaching of opera repertoire including arias, roles and scenes, instruction in acting, movement, and stagecraft techniques. The Opera Studies Program is open to full-time graduate students by audition. Placement occurs after matriculation. A maximum of two years participation in Opera Studies is permitted for each degree/diploma program. The Opera Studies Program is a multifaceted ensemble curriculum for singers with required coursework in

diction, acting, movement and opera workshop. Appropriate assignments are made after fall auditions which are required of all students and take place a few days prior to the beginning of classes.

 

Every academic year the Opera Studies program presents two full productions, chamber operas when appropriate, a semi-staged opera in Jordan Hall with orchestra, an outreach opera and several programs of opera scenes and arias with piano accompaniment. Recent past productions include Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, La Finta giardiniera, Così fan tutte, and Die Zauberflöte, Puccini’s Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi, John Musto’s Later the Same Evening, Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen, Massenet’s Cendrillon, Offenbach’s La Perichole, Handel’s Agrippina, Bernstein’s Candide, Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, and Britten’s The Turn of the Screw.

 

Small jazz ensembles, coached by Jazz Studies and department faculty, reflect NEC’s inclusive approach to music-making, including ensembles focused on free jazz, early jazz, gospel music, Brazilian music, and songwriting, as well as more traditional approaches to jazz performance. Ensembles are coached by faculty members Jerry Bergonzi, Frank Carlberg, Dominique Eade, Cecil McBee, Jason Moran, and others. The ensembles perform two or more times a year.

 

The NEC Jazz Orchestra performs classic and contemporary big band music under the direction of Ken Schaphorst as well as other faculty and guest artists. In the past these have included such prominent musicians as Muhal Richard Abrams, Bob Brookmeyer, Gil Evans, Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Holland, John Lewis, Maria Schneider, Gunther Schuller, Randy Weston, Gerald Wilson and Miguel Zenon. The ensemble is open to all NEC students by audition.

 

The NEC Jazz Composers’ Workshop Orchestra is devoted to rehearsing and performing works by NEC Jazz Composition students. The ensemble is coached by Frank Carlberg and gives the composers the opportunity to learn how to rehearse and conduct a band, as well as have their works heard.

 

CONTEMPORARY MUSICAL ARTS ENSEMBLES

The Contemporary Musical Arts Department offers a variety of ensembles that are open to all NEC students on a space-available basis and by audition.

Ensemble offerings vary from year to year, depending on the specific makeup of the department, and include traditional world music ensembles, a songwriters workshop, Early Jazz, Free Jazz, composition/improvisation ensembles, groups focused on open form and graphic scores, interdisciplinary ensembles, and more. Non-majors are invited to audition during Orientation. An online sign up sheet will be made available in August, and interested students can contact the Department Administrator for more information. CMA Ensembles for 2024-25 include those listed below. 

 

The Ted Reichman Ensemble: This ensemble performs music written by composers working today, primarily from the jazz tradition, who have proposed new models for integrating improvisation and composition, and who embrace new ideas about structure, groove and texture. Repertoire will range from completely notated music to open forms, and from complicated rhythms to ambient soundscapes.

COBRA (Anthony Coleman): This ensemble prepares performance versions of John Zorn’s classic composition, COBRA. Often called a “game piece,” it is a composition, a framework for performance, and a set of rules that organize a group of musicians into a community of sound. Rather than a conductor, COBRA is led by a “prompter” who facilitates communication within the ensemble, requiring both intense focus/adherence to the rules as well as a high degree of freedom and choice given to all members of the group. Auditions for COBRA will take place on September 3rd, 6pm, in G-01.

In the Chorino Ensemble (Amir Milstein) you will have the chance to explore Chorinho, often regarded as the "Cultural DNA" of Brazilian music. It contains elements from different cultures and musical traditions which have influenced Brazilian music over the centuries. African rhythms, Eastern European dances and Western Classical music forms have evolved into a virtuosic yet lyrical music style, played throughout the Cafes of Rio de Janeiro in the late 19th century to today's concert halls and jazz festivals worldwide.

Early Jazz (Anthony Coleman): In this ensemble, we work on the vocabulary that formed the basis for the music that has been the backbone of so much of American and world culture over the last hundred years, and yet is relatively little understood. We will particularly focus on rhythm and gestural concepts that were prevalent between the late teens and mid 1930’s. The idea of the collective ensemble is key. Specific to the CMA version of this group, I will try to focus to some degree on what has been called the “Avant-garde” of early jazz (our ability to do that will depend upon you!).This ensemble requires a full year commitment.

Contemporary Vocal Ensemble (Farayi Malek): This is an a cappella ensemble that will study and perform arrangements and compositions by Malek, students in the ensemble, and contemporary writers such as Kerry Marsh and Caroline Shaw. The group will study genres including (but not limited to) African American Spirituals, Contemporary Classical, Jazz, and Pop, with the goal of examining and celebrating the unique and vast capabilities of the human voice.

Mandé West African Music Ensemble (Balla Kouyaté): Mandé Music ensemble is an introduction to West African history and culture through the music. There are two sections of this ensemble, each rehearsing a separate night.

Irish Ceol Ensemble (Liz Knowles): In this ensemble, meeting only in the fall semester, students will work with renowned Irish fiddler Liz Knowles to learn tunes from the tradition, explore stylistic nuances, improvisation, and arrangement ideas. Rehearsals will take place on 9/11, 9/18, 9/25, 10/9, 10/16, 10/23, 10/30, 11/6, 11/13, 11/20. The first two meetings will run from 10 - 11:50am and the rest from 9 - 11:50am.

Persian Music Ensemble (Nima Janmohammadi): This ensemble offers an introduction to Persian Music traditions.

Songwriters’ Workshop (Steve Netsky): This ensemble offers a framework for songwriters to work on creating original songs drawing on a variety of contemporary genres. You do not need to have written songs before, but you should have some experience playing and singing songs by others.

Indie/Punk/Art Rock Ensemble (Lautaro Mantilla): This ensemble is an introduction to the diverse repertoire of underground music of the 1970s and 1980s. This music was created in opposition of mainstream culture and often contributed as a medium to bring about a radical awareness to any form of discrimination and used as a platform for political and social protest. By arranging and recomposing music from Dead Kennedys, Frank Zappa, Black Flag, The flat duo Jets, among many others, students gain knowledge of different compositional and improvisational approaches and explore what Bertolt Brecht may or may not have been loosely quoted as saying, “Art is not a mirror to reflect the world, but a hammer with which to shape it.” This fall, the ensemble will focus on music for the 1923 department production.

CMA Chamber (Eden MacAdam-Somer): This interdepartmental ensemble explores the boundaries between composition, improvisation, and international music traditions, through written and aural paths. This fall we will focus on works by Ruth Crawford Seeger and related concepts. Past projects have included engaging with works by Ruth Crawford Seeger, Ran Blake, Charles Ives, Gustav Mahler, Pauline Oliveros, Scott Joplin, Bach, and Lully as well as traditional folk music, workshopping student compositions/concepts, and performing new works by students, faculty, and other contemporary artists.

World Music Ensemble (Akram Haddad): This ensemble provides an introduction to repertoire from many international musical traditions, with a focus on aural learning, developing a solid groove, working out ensemble arrangements, and learning how to accompany and solo in different styles.

The Dave Zoffer Ensemble offers students a space to experience CMA from the ground up, exploring any of the following based on student interests: songwriting, recomposing, improvising, playing standards, playing by ear, arranging, working as a band, trying new styles (or maybe even new instruments) and much more.