Return to O'Neill Hall on Saturday afternoon 2-4 PM to tour the building and hear a variety of undergraduate and graduate students and the Notre Dame Children's Choir sing and perform. Designed to showcase the spectacular new spaces throughout O'Neill, and featuring performances representing the breadth of activity in the Department of Music and the Sacred Music at Notre Dame program. From instrumental chamber music and solo piano and organ performances, to solo voice, opera scenes, the Glee Club, the Chorale, Concordia and the SMND Children's Choir there will be something for everyone.
O’NEILL HALL PRESENTING ENSEMBLES
Chamber Music
Notre Dame’s fast-growing Chamber Music program consists of accomplished instrumental majors, who have at times advanced to the Fischoff Competition. Various configurations of small groups consist of strings, winds, and piano, and often include members of the Notre Dame Symphony. Several groups will perform a varied selection of repertoire.
Chorale
The Notre Dame Chorale, a mixed ensemble of 70 undergraduate (and some graduate) voices, performs the great choral repertoire spanning the Renaissance to the present. The Chorale’s O’Neill Hall open house performance will include a cappella works by Byrd, Schütz, and Schubert, and a segment featuring the group rehearsing “Christe qui lux es,” a 2007 motet by director Alexander Blachly’s son James Blachly.
Composers’ Consortium
Founded in 2015 by enterprising student composers and overseen by faculty composer John Liberatore, the Composer’s Consortium of Notre Dame produces high-quality concerts of student compositions every semester. Members of this burgeoning composers’ community will introduce and perform their original compositions in an intimate chamber music setting.
Concordia
Concordia is the advanced choir for the graduate students in Choral Conducting at Notre Dame. Curated by Professor Carmen-Helena Tellez, it aims to develop professional standards of performance for both conductors and singers. Concordia performs at least six concerts annually, with some of the most exquisite choral repertoire of all time.
Glee Club
The Notre Dame Glee Club, in its 104th year, performs a varied program of classical and popular a cappella music for men's chorus on campus and on tour each year. Their O'Neill Hall open house performance will include works of Victoria and Mendelssohn and a segment featuring the group in open rehearsal with director Dan Stowe.
Graduate Voice Studio
The Graduate Voice Studio at Notre Dame, taught by Stephen Lancaster and Kiera Duffy, is a select octet of versatile and talented young vocal artists who perform a wide-range of vocal literature, including art song, oratorio, early and contemporary music, opera, and choral music. The graduate voice studio will perform chamber music for solo voices.
Notre Dame Children’s Choir
The Notre Dame Children’s Choir is an ecumenical choral ensemble that educates over 300 singers between the ages of birth and 17. The Choir’s 2015 album, O Emmanuel, debuted in the #1 position on Billboard’s Chart of Traditional Classical Music. This fall the choir releases a Christmas album, Arturo Sandoval’s Christmas at Notre Dame, under the baton of director Mark Doerries and with Grammy-winning trumpeter Arturo Sandoval.
Opera ND
Opera ND performs fully staged operas featuring our talented ND students and members of our greater community. Artistic Director Alek Shrader aims to encourage creative thought, expression, and storytelling, culminating in performance. Each production is specifically crafted for the development of the singers, with an emphasis on growth.
Organ Studio
The organ program at Notre Dame, led by Craig Cramer, has added two practice organs to its collection. O’Neill Hall houses four practice organs: one by Hal Gober, which moved from Crowley Hall. This is a fine mechanical-action organ. The Holtkamp studio organ likewise moved from Crowley; this is the only organ on campus that has electric action. The two additions are a small organ (formerly in a residence in New York) built by Dan Jaeckel, and a splendid organ built by John Schreiner, a student of Fisk. These organs serve our students in their daily practice and have been a wonderful addition to our programs.
Piano Studio
With Notre Dame’s recent acquisition of four brand new Steinways, selected in 2017 by faculty pianists John Blacklow and Daniel Schlosberg from the Steinway factory in Astoria, New York, serious Notre Dame pianists have many excellent instruments on which to hone their artistry. Various current music majors will perform short selections from their repertoire on the new Steinways, on the Regier fortepiano (a replica of an early 19th century keyboard), and on the Bizzi harpsichord.
String Studio
Notre Dame’s string area encompesses student majors and non-majors in violin, viola, and cello. To highlight the broad-ranging achievements of Notre Dame’s string area under the tutelage of visiting professor Brendan Shea, students will perform classical repertoire of various time periods.
Undergraduate Voice Studio
The 2018 Undergraduate Voice Studio, taught by Kiera Duffy, Stephen Lancaster, and Alek Shrader, features 15 young singers, most of whom are double majors in such varied fields as math, economics, Spanish, neuroscience, and pre-medicine. Steeped not only in a comprehensive musical education, our students reveal the distinct advantages of a broader liberal arts education in their artistically sensitive and intellectually sophisticated performances.