The Yale Glee Club Blog

A few pictures from our recent time in Brazil. Overlooking the beach in Copacabana from the top of Sugarloaf Mountain. A snapshot taken during our drive from Rio to Campinas. The famous Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. In rehearsal with the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra and conductor Roberto Minczuk. A view from atop Corcovado Mountain. Glee Clubbers and members of the children's choir from the Cidade de Deus before our joint concert. A view of the beach in the evening.

Below, Dylan Morris '11 shares his memories of performing Haydn's Creation with the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra. When YGC director Jeff Douma outlined the schedule for our South American tour, I was excited to learn that, in addition to performing our “tour repertoire” of a cappella and choral-piano pieces, we would be reprising all of the large choral-orchestral pieces we had learned and performed during the year: Brahms’s Nänie , two short pieces by Mendelssohn, and Haydn’s Creation oratorio. We would be performing The Creation in Rio de Janeiro with the professional Brazil Symphony Orchestra. Before a typical tour concert, the YGC will arrive at the venue the afternoon before the show, and rehearse our a cappella repertoire in the space to get a feel for its particular acoustical quirks and challenges. Putting on a large-scale piece like the Creation meant a different kind of tour schedule; in addition to afternoon concerts and outreach, we...

A poetic look at the end of tour from rising sophomore Julia Myers. Having sung for the young girls who gave a standing ovation after every song, for the vast audience spilling into the aisles for the Creation, and for the elderly woman who kissed my cheeks with tears in her eyes, repeating “Obrigada” over and over in my ear and so many other things I only wish I could understand, I found myself sitting on the bus back to New Haven with a very heavy feeling. I couldn’t begin to imagine how a group that had just sung Bright College Years in an ill-formed circle at the baggage claim could be dispersing all around the world. But then I settled on what I remembered best about Rio, this one moment when I looked out of the bus window and saw along the shore a line of white ships poised on the glassy water. Their maiden names once painted in blood red were chipped and faded from the burning sunlight…the waves lapped up against their sides like rivulets of cool relief and when they fell...

Below, Cynthia Weaver '12 talks about our days in Campinas, Brazil.  After a scenic 9-hour bus ride filled with song, mischief and sleep, the Glee Club arrived in Campinas, home of the Universidade Estadual de Campinas, or Unicamp for short. On our first day in Campinas, we gave a concert at Unicamp to a small but enthusiastic audience. After a lunch in the university dining hall, we headed to rehearsal. That evening, the Glee Club enjoyed an American-style pizza dinner with some music students from the university. It was great to get to talk with some local music students, many of whom hope to eventually study music in the United States.             The next morning was a free morning, so the Glee Club enjoyed an evening of socializing. After our afternoon rehearsals and some free time at the mall due to drizzly weather, we headed to our evening concert at Igreja Católica Santa Rita de Cássia. The concert was a collaboration with the Unicamp Symphony Orchestra and two local s...

In this post, rising junior Emily Howell details our amazing outreach activities with the children's choir from the Cidade de Deus, a favela in Rio de Janeiro.  Our outreach with the children’s choir Grupo Vozes da Cidade de Deus, from the Casa de Santa Ana—Cidade de Deus is the City of God slum (favela) in Rio de Janeiro, featured in the movie The City of God —was, for me at least, the most amazing part of an amazing tour.   We didn’t go into the dangerous favela, but instead met the children at the Escola SESC, where they performed for us and we for them.   The students, who learn various dancing and rhythmic activities from a young age before they join the choir, demonstrated activities from ballet to samba dancing.   They even encouraged us to join them in the samba, and kindly didn’t laugh at us (too much, anyway) when we tried to dance along. We sang   “This Little Light of Mine” from our tour repertoire together after Jeff taught them the words and the melody.   We also ...

Here are some pictures from the Argentina leg of our recent South American tour.  A scene from the tango show we saw on our last night in Buenos Aires. A snapshot of the colorful Argentinean neighborhood of La Boca.  The 148th Glee Club at the Santa Susana Ranch in Buenos Aires. Glee Clubbers horseback riding at the ranch. Gauchos perform at the ranch. If a gaucho snatched a ring (pictured), he gave it to a lucky Glee Club lady in exchange for a kiss. Cathedral in La Plata, the capital of the province of Buenos Aires.

In this post, rising sophomore Ben Robbins talks more in-depth about our outreach concert at a Buenos Aires school. On our first full day in Buenos Aires, we performed an outreach concert at the Colegio del Buen Consejo, a private girls school near La Boca, one of the slums of the area.  We sang our tour repertoire for nearly 250 girls, ages 5--18, in the chapel of the school.  They responded with a lot of enthusiasm, especially to our native Colombian Andres Torres '09, who was translating for Jeff.  After the concert we didn't get to talk much to the girls (the H1N1 outbreak and our group's poor overall level of health made people uneasy) but the director of the school was very appreciative of our visit and performance.  She emphasized the importance of music in the education of the girls, all of whom are from poor families and are sponsored to attend the school.  She explained that music is integrated into the rest of the curriculum so that they can learn a skill to b...