Founded in 1990 by the late Robert Shaw, the Carnegie Hall Choral Workshop gathers choral directors and singers— both professionals and exceptionally taltented amateurs— to prepare and perform great masterworks.

For more information, select:
About The Workshop
About Helmuth Rilling
About Kathy Saltzman Romey
Requirements
Scores
Stipend
Travel/Hotel
Schedule
Application
Application Form
Application Deadline

About The Workshop
Founded in 1990 by the late Robert Shaw, the Carnegie Hall Choral Workshop gathers choral directors and singers—both professionals and exceptionally talented amateurs—to prepare and perform great masterworks. This season, legendary German conductor Helmuth Rilling returns to lead the 16th choral workshop, featuring Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. Kathy Saltzman Romey, Director of Choral Activities at the University of Minnesota, will assist in the preparation of the chorus. The workshop includes five days of intensive rehearsals and will culminate in a final performance at Carnegie Hall with Maestro Rilling conducting the chorus, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and soloists James Taylor, Klaus Häger, Sibylla Rubens, Ingeborg Danz, and Michael Nagy.

Eighty singers will be selected by a competitive application process. Applications for workshop auditors will also be accepted through a separate auditor brochure, available this summer.

About Helmuth Rilling
In 1954, Helmuth Rilling founded the Gächinger Kantorei and, in 1965, the Bach Collegium Stuttgart as the choir’s regular orchestral partner. In 1981, Mr. Rilling founded the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart, dedicated to furthering the music of J. S. Bach through public concerts, master classes, symposia, and residencies all over the world, in addition to special annual projects like the Bach Week Stuttgart and the European Music Festival Stuttgart. In 2001, he founded the Festivalensemble Stuttgart, a choral and orchestral ensemble of talented young musicians from 25 different countries. In the final concert of the 2005 Carnegie Hall Choral Workshop, Mr. Rilling led the premiere of Robert Levin’s completion of Mozart’s Mass in C Minor, commissioned by The Carnegie Hall Corporation. He performs regularly throughout Europe, the US, and Canada, and has been the Artistic Director of the Oregon Bach Festival ince 1970.

From 1970 to 1984, Mr. Rilling was the first musician to record all of J. S. Bach’s cantatas, and guided the Internationale Bachakademie’s critically acclaimed project to record Bach’s complete works, released in 2000 to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the composer’s death.

Among the many prizes Mr. Rilling has received are the UNESCO International Music Prize and the Theodor Heuss Prize. In 2003, he became an honorary member of the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences. He won a Grammy Award in 2000 for his recording of Penderecki’s Credo and was nominated in 2001 for his recording of Rihm’s Deus Passus.

About Kathy Saltzman Romey
Kathy Saltzman Romey is Director of Choral Activities at the University of Minnesota and Artistic Director of the Minnesota Chorale, the principal chorus of the Minnesota Orchestra.

Romey earned a BA in music from the University of Oregon in 1979. She continued her studies in Frankfurt, Germany, under Helmuth Rilling, receiving a degree in choral conducting from the Frankfurt Musikhochschule in 1984. She returned to the US to assist Dale Warland at Macalester College and served as director of choral activities there until 1992. A staff member of the Oregon Bach Festival since 1984, Romey is principal chorus master of the Festival Choir, which she has prepared for annual performances, including the premiere and Grammy Award­winning recording of Penderecki’s Credo. She has also served as chorus master to the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart. In 2005, she prepared programs for the Westminster Symphonic Choir and the Netherlands Radio Choir and also assisted Mr. Rilling with the Carnegie Hall Choral Workshop in premiering Levin’s completion of Mozart’s C Minor Mass, commissioned by The Carnegie Hall Corporation.

Romey served on the planning committee of the Sixth World Symposium on Choral Music, held in Minneapolis in 2002. A strong advocate for contemporary music, she writes The Composer’s Voice column for the International Choral Bulletin. Active as a guest conductor throughout the US, Romey was named 2002 Conductor of the Year by the Minnesota chapter of the American Choral Directors Association.

Requirements
All applicants must be at least 18 years of age.

Scores
Participants will receive scores of the work in advance of the workshop and will be expected to know their parts upon arrival and be able to work at performance tempo from the first rehearsal.

Stipend
Participants will receive a stipend of $500.

Travel/Hotel
Participants are responsible for making their own hotel reservations and round-trip travel arrangements to New York City. Those selected to attend the workshop will be given information about discounted hotel rates.

Schedule
The Choral Workshop runs January 8­13. Check-in will be the morning of January 8, location TBD. There will be an opening reception that evening. The culminating concert will be at Carnegie Hall on Saturday, January 13, at 7 PM. A more detailed schedule will be sent with acceptance notification. All sessions are mandatory.

Application
Please complete the application form and return it with the following:

• A current, typed résumé.
  
  
• Audition recording (high quality cassette or CD) with the following items in the order shown:
  
  
  1. Identify yourself and the voice part for which you are auditioning.
     
     
  2. A piano-accompanied solo of your own choice, preferably sostenuto. The purpose of this is to hear you on music with which you feel comfortable and that will illustrate the quality of your voice.
     
     
  3. Your voice part to the cum sancto spiritu fugue from the Bach Mass in B Minor (mm. 37­ 63, Bärenreiter measure numbering), with accompaniment. The purpose of this exercise is to determine your flexibility at a very fast tempo. Please sing the passage as close to = 110 as you can. All sopranos should do soprano 1. Those wishing to be considered for soprano 2 should perform that part as well.
     
     
  4. Read aloud the following German text:
     Zwar ist solche Herzensstube wohl kein schöner Fürstensaal, sondern eine finstre Grube; doch sobald dein Gnadenstrahl in dieselbe nur wird blinken, wird sie voller Sonnen dünken.
     
     
  5. Sing the following exercise on "ah," beginning in the middle of your range:
     
     
     
     Repeat the exercise, each time a half step higher, until you have reached the upper limit of your useful range. Prior to singing, please announce the key in which you will begin the exercise.
     
     
  6. Sing the following exercise on whichever vowel you wish, starting in the middle of your range, at the same tempo as the previous exercise:
     
     
     
     Repeat the exercise, each time a half step lower, until you have reached the lower limit of your useful range. Prior to singing, please announce the key in which you will begin the exercise.
     
     Please keep in mind that Maestro Rilling is interested in the ability of each singer to keep vibrato under control at all volume levels, particularly in high voices.
     
     
  
  
  
• A non-refundable application fee of $40. Please make check or money order payable to The Carnegie Hall Corporation. Credit card payment is also accepted. A credit card form is available here.
  
  Please keep in mind that Maestro Rilling is interested in the ability of each singer to keep vibrato under control at all volume levels, particularly in high voices.
  
  All tapes must be enclosed in a cassette box and CDs in jewel cases. Indexed CDs are preferred.

Application Form
  2006–2007 Carnegie Hall Professional Training Workshops Brochure
(2.18 MB PDF)

Application Deadline
Application materials must be received by Carnegie Hall no later than Friday, June 30, 2006. Applicants will be informed of their workshop status on or about Thursday, August 31.