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    Ƶapp Choirs Brings Together Guest Musicians, Alumni, Students and Faculty for Major Works

    Concert of choral masterworks features guest conductor Simon Carrington at Greeley’s 2024 Bailey Choral Festival.

    Later this month, University of Northern Colorado (Ƶapp) Choirs will bring together renowned guest conductor Simon Carrington, over 20 Ƶapp alumni, eight conducting fellows, five Ƶapp faculty soloists/lecturers and four choirs for a concert of large-scale choral masterworks. 

    This will be the seventh time Carrington has conducted the Bailey Choral Festival. His career has taken him around the world, with much time spent in his native UK, where he co-founded the acclaimed The King’s Singers, and in the United States, where he taught at Yale University, New England Conservatory and University of Kansas. He is known for conducting choral masterworks, which have become the mainstay of the festival, and the tradition of hosting him in Greeley has made him well-regarded among music educators in the region. 

    The culminating concert of Bailey Choral Festival, entitled “A Classical Celebration,” will be on Saturday, Nov. 23, at 7:30 p.m., in Ƶapp Campus Commons Performance Hall. Jonathan Bellman, Ƶapp professor of Music History and Literature, will give a pre-concert talk, and slated for the program are Haydn’s Te Deum and Lord Nelson Mass, Mozart’s Regina coeli and additional works by Franz Schubert and Baldassare Galuppi. Ƶapp’s four choirs (directed by Jill Burgett, Clelyn Chapin and Jeff Talley) and the Ƶapp Symphony Orchestra (directed by Andrés Felipe Jaime) will be joined by guest alumni singers and Ƶapp faculty soloists (Mandy Spivak, soprano; Logan Contreras, mezzo-soprano; Charles Moore, tenor) along with David Grogan, guest bass soloist. Galen Darrough will serve as Master of Ceremonies.  

    The Bailey Choral Festival began in 2010 and is named after benefactor and Ƶapp alum Donald Bailey, Baylor University professor emeritus, and his wife, Karen Bailey. With additional financial support from Ƶapp professors emeriti Howard Skinner and Darrough, it has continued every two years since, apart from a brief hiatus in 2020, and has continued to bring together students, alumni and guests for large works for choir and orchestra. This year the festival adds the Ƶapp Choral Conducting Symposium, with eight conducting fellows chosen from around the country who will have a three-day residency of workshops and master classes with Carrington and Ƶapp faculty, plus the opportunity to sing in the final performance.  

    Tickets can be purchased at . 


    Ƶapp's College of Performing and Visual Arts provides a comprehensive arts education that prepares students to be flexible, innovative and well-rounded emerging professional artists, arts educators and scholars. As a cultural hub of Ƶapp, the college celebrates creativity with the university, local community, surrounding region and wider arts world. For more information, visit arts.unco.edu

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