glee club in concert

Chamber Singers

The Chamber Singers of the Yale Glee Club is a group of eighteen singers who perform choral works primarily designed for a small ensemble. Their repertoire ranges from sacred music to madrigals to modern pieces. Selections from the repertoire are performed throughout the year at various Glee Club concerts. Membership is open by audition from within the Glee Club.

Arianne Abela, MUS '10, the Assistant Conductor for 2009-10 is originally from the San Francisco Bay Area. She is currently receiving a Masters of Music degree in conducting from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music/Yale School of Music under the instruction of Simon Carrington, Jeffrey Douma and Marguerite L. Brooks. Arianne was a member of Yale University’s renowned Schola Cantorum, which toured to China and Korea in May 2009 to perform Bach, Mass in B Minor. From 2009-2010 Arianne will act as Assistant Conductor of the Yale Glee Club under Jeffrey Douma, as well as conductor of the Yale Chamber Singers. She is currently co-conductor of the Saybrook Orchestra and founding member of Etherea vocal ensemble of New Haven. Arianne is a choir member and frequent soloist for Christ Church, New Haven. In July 2009 she conducted the Bach, Mass in B Minor in Northampton, MA for a fundraising event benefiting the Northampton Community Music Center scholarship fund.

Arianne received most of her musical training during her many years in the San Francisco Girls Chorus where she participated in SF Opera and SF Symphony productions and worked with Michael Tilson Thomas, Vance George, Joseph Jennings, Helmuth Rilling and many other prestigious conductors and teachers. Arianne has recently returned to the SFGC as music director of the summer Alumnae Chorus.

Arianne graduated from Smith College in May 2008 where she studied voice with Jane Bryden. She was named the 2008 Judith Raskin Memorial Prize recipient awarded to "the most outstanding student in vocal performance." Arianne was also named the 2008 Earnst Wallfisch Prize recipient for "outstanding commitment, ability and diligence in music." A four-year member of the Smith College Glee Club and Chamber Singers, Arianne acted as the assistant conductor for Jonathan Hirsh and Deanna Joseph. In her final year at Smith, she organized and conducted There Always Something Sings, a women’s choral program that featured works by Noble, Howells, Mendelssohn, Rautuvaara, and the Porpora Magnificat for string orchestra, continuo, and women’s chorus.

In the spring of 2007, Arianne conducted movements of the Durufle Requiem and Schostakovich Symphony No. 3 with the Smith College Orchestra and choirs. That same year, Arianne acted as Musical Director for the Smith Theater Department production of Cinders, which featured her original instrumental and vocal compositions.

In 2006, Arianne performed as Le Feu in the 5-College Consortium Opera Production of Ravel's L’enfant et les Sortileges. She has also appeared as a soloist for the South Hadley Chorale in performances of Elijah and the Mozart Requiem. She has also performed for the Wistariahurst Museum concert series and has sung withprofessional baroque ensemble Arcadia Players under the baton of Ian Watson. She is the winner of the 2008 Smith College Orchestra Concerto Competition and performed Mozart’s Exsultate Jubilate at the 2008 Spring Orchestra concert.

As a conductor, Arianne participated in the 2006 International Varna Conducting Workshop in Bulgaria where she conducted the Verdi Requiem featuring the Vidin State Philharmonic Orchestra. In the summers of 2006 and 2007 she was a Conducting and Vocal apprentice at the Berkshire Choral Festival where she worked and performed in master classes with many renowned conductors and soloists such as Phyllis Curtin, Bob Page, Jane Glover, Grant Gershon, Maria Guinand, Malcolm Bilson and Kathy S. Romey.