September 25, 2011, Greencastle, Ind. — This Wednesday, September 28, the DePauw University Chorus and DePauw Chamber Singers will present their opening concert of the 127th season under the direction of the DePauw School of Music’s new choral director, Gregory Ristow. The concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Kresge Auditorium of the Judson and Joyce Green Center for the Performing Arts and is free and open to the public.
Entitled "In the Beginnings," the choral concert presents music celebrating creation, new love, and new possibilities. The program is divided into three distinct sections -- music of "New Creation," including works by Tomás Luis de Victoria, George Frideric Handel, and Franz Joseph Haydn; as well as Aaron Copland’s In the Beginning featuring mezzo-soprano Caroline Bradley Smith, a professor of voice at DePauw. The second section, 
"New Love," features music by Claude Debussy and Johannes Brahms, while the final section, "New Possibilities" features arrangements from Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along and Leonard Bernstein’s Candide.
Choral director Gregory Ristow (pictured at right) holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in conducting from the Eastman School of Music, where he taught undergraduate conducting, graduate choral conducting, and was assistant conductor of the Eastman Chorale and the Eastman-Rochester Chorus. Additionally, he holds the Bachelor of Music degree in music education from the Oberlin College Conservatory, the Master of Music degree in conducting and Master of Arts degree in music theory pedagogy from the Eastman School of Music, the Dalcroze certificate from the Juilliard School (studying with Robert Abramson), and the Dalcroze License from the Longy School of Music (studying with Anne Farber and Lisa Parker). He began his work with the DePauw University choirs in August 2011.
Founded in 1884, the DePauw University School of Music is the nation's sixth-oldest private institution for post-secondary music instruction and the longest-running in Indiana. Learn more here.