Keene Chorale

Handel On Ice!! The Keene Chorale Presents the Messiah The Keene Chorale has very exciting news to share. We are performing selected choruses from the Messiah on June 5th in Keene, at 3:30 pm, in the Keene Ice Arena.  This is a setting that allows for social distancing and extra ventilation for singers, musicians, and audience.  Our conductor is maestro Cailin Marcel Manson and we are accompanied by concert pianist, Vladimir Odinokikh and selected strings. Why the Messiah in the spring? Although typically performed during the Christmas season, the first performance of this English sacred oratorio was an Easter offering and took place on Good Friday in 1742.  The piece tells of Christ’s birth but also his passion, death and resurrection, and it explores themes of redemption.  What more compelling reason than this, to celebrate a season of hope at this difficult time.  The premier performance was a benefit performance that raised 400 pounds and liberated 142 men from debtor’s prison.  Our June performance is also a benefit performance.  There is no admission fee; we are instead accepting donations for the Community Kitchen and we also hope to raise 400 “pounds”.  The Kitchen is especially looking for snacks for their Kid’s Program, including granola bars, juice boxes and individual fruit cups as well as complete meals, for example, canned beef stew or ravioli. The Keene Chorale’s conductor, Cailin Marcel Manson, is an associate professor and Director of Choral Activities and Music Performance at Clark University, the Artistic Director and Conductor of the Germantown Concert Chorus and the Music Director of the Bennington County Choral Society. He studied voice performance at Temple University and opera performance and orchestral conducting at the Universitat Mozarteum Salzburg.  He has toured extensively as a baritone soloist and master teacher throughout the United States, Europe and Asia, with organizations, such as the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, Taipei Philharmonic, Teatro San Carlo and Konservatorium Oslo, among others.  He has a unique background as an African-American conductor whose roots go back to his German Lutheran church in Mount Airy, PA. In this ethnically diverse church community, he was exposed to Bach cantatas and gospel music, “the best of both worlds” as he has described it.  Under his leadership, over the last five years, the Keene Chorale has tackled projects that seemed impossible for a community choir: a partnership with three other choirs to produce Verdi’s Requiem, a community collaborative production of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass and the incorporation of soloists representing a diversity of ethnic and racial backgrounds in our productions of Bach and Britten’s music. Vladimir Odinokikh, our accompanist, began playing the piano at the age of four and received his training at some of Russia’s finest music institutes, including the Tchaikovsky Conservatory and Gnessin Institute of Moscow. Competitions and festivals included the First Rachmaninoff International Piano Competition, The Russia National Competition (Prize), Chamber Music Competition of Soviet Composers (First Prize), International Ponce-Scriabin Festival, First Bach festival in Peru, and the Isadora Duncan Festival in England. His reputation as a soloist and chamber musician developed as he performed with leading Soviet artists and prestigious organizations such as the Rosconcert and the Moscow Philharmonic.  Mr. Odinokikh has performed in the concert halls of Europe, South America and the United States and with symphony orchestras in Russia and Mexico.  Mr.Odinokikh maintains a private piano studio and serves as collaborative pianist at Keene State College and teaches at Franklin Pierce University. The Keene Chorale is a non-auditioned chorus of mixed voices open to adults of all singing and music reading abilities.  Our members come from the Monadnock region, Massachusetts, and Vermont and are inspired weekly by the incredible talents of our conductor, Cailin Marcel Manson and our accompanist, Vladimir Odinokikh. We welcome all interested singers to join us for our fall semester as we prepare the complete Messiah for our Christmas concert.  Please check our website, www.keenechorale.org, for further information.