About my singing
Peter
W. Shea has
sung professionally since 1972
throughout New England and the Hudson Valley. He is a frequent
soloist
with groups such as Arcadia
Players, Hampshire
Choral
Society, Commonwealth
Opera,
and the Brattleboro
Community
Chorus. He also performs
regularly with vocal and instrumental chamber ensembles including the
vocal
ensemble Cantabile,
with choral groups such as Novi
Cantori,
and can be
heard as a soloist in music series like the New
England Bach Festival and the Mohawk
Trail
Concerts. He
is a member of the Arcadia
Players board of directors, and served as
co-Artistic Director for the 2003-2004 season.
Peter was born in 1954 in Lewiston, Maine, into a musical family that
has
produced many professional singers going back at least three
generations on his
father's side. His musical education as a child was singing in his
father's
church choirs at Court Street Baptist Church in Auburn, Maine; his
mother was a
school librarian. After graduating from high school in Buckfield,
Maine, he studied
voice with Arthur Koret at the Hartt
School, University of Hartford, librarianship at Southern Connecticut State University,
and historical musicology at the University
of
Connecticut, Storrs. He has taken part in several vocal master
classes with
baritone Sanford
Sylvan. Peter's musical interests are very wide-ranging,
covering art
song and vocal chamber music from 1500 through the present, with
special
emphasis on German lieder.
Watch and listen to Peter sing:
A video on YouTube of David Kidwell's Storm,
with the composer at the piano, written for Peter in 2005, performed
February 10, 2008, on the concert "Steps of Love: songs of love and
winter." Preceded by a short poem read by hornist Jean Jeffries. Text
of song, with more info on David.
Selections from Schubert's Winterreise,
March 5,
2004, with Monica Jakuc, fortepiano
1.
Gute Nacht 11.
Frühlingstraum 12. Die Post
Live concert recordings of four recitals presented as part of my
2005-2006 sabbatical, over 100 musical settings of Heinrich Heine's
poetry, including ten world premieres of commissioned songs, on the Scholarworks@UMass
Amherst website.
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How I eat
Lots
of fish and
fruit, and the occasional hamburger. No, seriously, I
work 32 hours a week at
the W.E.B. Du Bois Library
at the University of Massachusetts,
Amherst. As a
member of the Cataloging
and
Processing Department I mainly catalog music and other audio-visual
materials (sound recordings, scores, videos, etc.), books in
Roman-alphabet
non-Iberian foreign languages, and other things no one else wants to
catalog.
|

W.E.B. Du Bois Library,
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
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Library reflected in Campus Pond
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My big project
During my 1997-98 sabbatical
I began preparing a Web-based
performer's guide to solo vocal settings of the poetry of Heinrich Heine
(1797-1856)
entitled Ihr
Lieder!
Ihr meine guten Lieder! (You songs! O you brave songs
of mine!). This
project combines my enthusiasm for the music and poetry with my
graduate
training in musicology and my career in librarianship. I have thus far
collected over 2300 songs, and in 2004 made my database of over
8300 Heine
settings searchable on the web on the Heine Lieder Query
page. A website containing recordings, scores and other related
materials from four concerts of Heine settings presented as part of my
2005-2006 sabbatical is under development on Scholarworks, the
UMass Amherst digital institutional repository.
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Performances in the
Spring 2008
concert season
See also complete
listings of performances in previous concert
seasons:
- Sunday, Jan. 27, 2008, 5:00 pm: The
National Yiddish Book Center presents Cantabile (the vocal
ensemble in which Peter sings bass) performing Music of Salamone
Rossi, Italian madrigals and canzonets,
sonatas and dances, and Hebrew psalm settings from the cusp of the late
Renaissance and early Baroque periods by Monteverdi's Jewish colleague.
With guest instrumentalists and vocalists. National Yiddish Book Center, 1021 West St,
Amherst, Ma, on the campus of Hampshire
College. $8.
- Sunday, Feb. 10, 2008, 3:00 pm:
Peter will be a featured performer with hornist Jean Jeffries and
pianist David Kidwell on "Steps of Love," a program of vocal chamber
music presented by the Music at South Church concert series. The
concert will include premiere performances of several new and
accessible works by local composers. South
Congregational Church, 1066 South East St., on Fiddler's Green, South
Amherst, Mass. Admission is
free, with donations encouraged. Also performing will be
soprano Brenda McDonald of Shrewsbury, flutist Susan Dunbar of New
Salem, and hornist Chris Mortensen of Goshen. The music is based on two
themes - love and winter - both appropriate to mid-February and
the weekend before Valentine's Day. The vocal works will be sung
chiefly in English. Mr. Kidwell, who conducts the Holyoke Civic
Symphony and is music director at Edwards Church in Northampton, has
composed three of the works on the program, including a new song
written for this concert, "The world is too much with us," a setting of
Wordsworth's poem for tenor, horn and piano. Other works composed or
revised specifically for this program include "Psalm 92" by Willis
Bridegam, Librarian Emeritus of Amherst College, "Liebeslied" by Harry
Seelig, retired professor of German at UMass Amherst, and three
excerpts from "Steps of Love" a large-scale song cycle by renowned
Pelham composer John Craig Cooper. Two other works will be
premiered on this concert: "Winter Dance," a duet for flute and horn,
by hornist and teacher Thomas Hooper of North Amherst, and the song
cycle, "Snow Storm," a setting of four Ralph Waldo Emerson poems by
Zeke Hecker, retired teacher, oboist and composer, of Guilford,
VT. See a video excerpt from
this concert on YouTube
-- David Kidwell's "Storm" with the composer at the piano, written for
Peter in 2005, preceded by a short poem read by hornist Jean Jeffries. Text
of song, with more info on David.
- Sunday, Feb. 17, 2008, 7:30 pm: Peter
will be a chorus member and one of several soloists in a benefit
concert for the Cancer
Connection, conducted by Katherine Fitzgibbon. Works will include
Schütz's Musikalische Exequien
and motets by Brahms. St. Mary’s Catholic Church, 3 Elm
St.,
Northampton MA. Directions
and maps
- Sunday, Mar. 9, 2008, 4:00 pm:
Peter will be tenor soloist in the Offertorium Intende Voci
by Franz Schubert, with the Greater
Westfield Choral Association, Marc Winer, director. Schubert's Mass in G major and a selection of
spirituals for choir and piano will also be on the program. First Congregational Church, 18 Broad St.,
Westfield MA $7 general admission, $5 students/seniors. Directions.
- Sunday, Mar. 16, 2008, 3:00 pm:
Peter will be tenor soloist with the South Hadley Chorale, Deanna
Joseph, director, in their performance of Beethoven's Mass in C major and Mendelssohn's Psalm 42.
Abbey Memorial Chapel on the Mount Holyoke College campus. General
admission: $15.00; senior citizens: $10.00; students/children: $ 5.00.
For more information see the Chorale's website.
- Saturday, Mar. 29, 2008, 7:30 pm:
Peter will sing in Arcadia Players' performance of Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass (Missa in angustiis).
Also on the concert will be Haydn's Symphony
no. 49 and Piano
concerto in D major, with Monica Jackuc, fortepiano. Grace Episcopal Church, 14 Boltwood Ave.,
Amherst MA. General
admission, pre-ordered $20; preferred seating, pre-ordered $30; at-door
tickets $5 more; ($25 general, $35 preferred); student tickets always
$10. For more information see the Arcadia Players website.
- Wednesday, Apr. 2, 2008, 4:00 pm:
Peter will sing his annual recital
of German lieder for the Amherst College German Dept and German House,
with pianists Monica Jakuc and Gregory Hayes. This year's program will
be Romantic
Journeys, including Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte, Conradin
Kreutzer's Wanderlieder,
Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden
Gesellen, and Eichendorff
Wanderlieder by Othmar Schoeck. Porter
House, 46 Boltwood Ave., Amherst MA (next to the Lord Jeffery Inn).
Free and open to the public.
- Sunday, Apr. 6, 2008, 4:00 pm: Cantabile (the vocal
ensemble in which Peter sings bass) and the UMass
Madrigal Singers present a free concert of
English Madrigals, followed by a Musical Feast. The UMass
Madrigal Singers will open the concert with a selection of ten a cappella
English madrigals. Following the intermission Cantabile will be joined
by lutenist Meg Pash and gambist Laurie Rabut in a smorgasbord of
ballads, rounds, madrigals, motets and other works from the 12th to
18th centuries, all on the theme of a
Musical Feast. The two ensembles will join forces at the
conclusion in Tomas Luis da Victoria's Regina caeli, a motet for double
chorus. All Saints Episcopal Church, 7 Woodbridge St,
South Hadley, MA. Free and open to
the public. Donations gratefully accepted.
- Sunday, Apr. 20, 2008, 4:00 pm: Novi Cantori, the
Longmeadow-based chamber choir directed by Allan Taylor (in which Peter
sings baritone and tenor), presents the first performance of its spring
concert series at Granville Federated
Church, Granville MA.
- Saturday, Apr. 26, 2008, 7:30 pm:
Peter
and pianist
Elise
Jackendoff will present their second performance of a program entitled Songs to
Seraphine at the Unitarian Universalist Society
of Amherst, 121 North Pleasant St., Amherst MA. "Seraphine"
is a
cycle of fifteen short poems written by Heinrich Heine in the 1830s. It
will serve as the framework of a musical kaleidoscope -- fifteen songs
by fifteen composers, covering the widest possible range of styles,
moods and languages, including English, French, Italian and
Romanian, in addition to Heine's original German. The program will
include songs by well-known composers such as Camille Saint-Saens, Hugo
Wolf and Edvard Grieg, as well as several works composed
especially for this program by area composers. To give the audience a
sense of the often difficult selection process that goes into a project
like this, they will be asked to participate by comparing and ranking
several additional musical settings of one of the poems. Admission is
free, with donations to benefit the Society's music fund gratefully
accepted. Directions.
Flyer (PDF)
- Sunday, Apr. 27, 2008, 4:00 pm: Novi Cantori, the
Longmeadow-based chamber choir directed by Allan Taylor (in which Peter
sings baritone and tenor), presents the second performance of its
spring
concert series at St. John's
Episcopal Church, Northampton MA.
- Sunday, May 2, 2008, 4:00 pm: Novi Cantori, the
Longmeadow-based chamber choir directed by Allan Taylor (in which Peter
sings baritone and tenor), presents the third performance of its spring
concert series at Wilbraham United
Church, Wilbraham MA.
- Friday, May 9, 2008, 7:30 pm:
Peter will sing selections from 10
Scottish Songs by Carl Maria von Weber on a benefit concert for
Arcadia Players. The
program also includes music by Haydn and Beethoven, played by the
Arcadia Players Chamber Ensemble (Christopher
Krueger,
flute; Lisa Rautenberg,
violin; Monica Jakuc
Leverett, fortepiano; Kivie Cahn-Lipman,
cello). Skinner Memorial Chapel, United Congregational
Church of Holyoke, 395 High Street, Holyoke MA. Suggested
donation $10 at the
door. Directions and
map.
- Sunday, May 11, 2008, 4:00 pm:
Peter will sing selections from 10
Scottish Songs by Carl Maria von Weber on a program presented
by the Frederick
Historic Piano Collection. The program also includes music by Haydn
and Beethoven, played by the Arcadia Players Chamber Ensemble
(Christopher
Krueger,
flute; Lisa Rautenberg,
violin; Monica Jakuc
Leverett, fortepiano; Kivie Cahn-Lipman,
cello). Ashburnham Community Church,
Ashburnham MA. Admission: $10.00 per adult.
Children and students, free. Directions
and map.
- Sunday, May 18, 2008, 3:00 pm:
Chamber Music at Wistariahurst:
Schumann & Brahms. Peter will be singing with the
Schubertians Chorus, directed by Jane Hanson, other soloists, and the
piano trio of Monica Jakuc Leverett, Sarah Cornelius Briggs, and Volcy
Pelletier. This program includes Brahms Ziegeunerlieder (Gypsy songs) arranged
for chorus, and Schumann's Spanisches
Liederspiel, for four solo voices. The other soloists will be
Mary Beth Taylor, soprano, Jane Hanson, mezzo-soprano, and Terry Ward,
bass. Admission $15. Wistariahurst
Museum, 238 Cabot Street (at the corner of Beech Street), Holyoke, MA.
Directions and map.
- Friday, May 23, 2008, 8:00 pm:
Valley Voices (in which Peter sings baritone) presents Songs of Farewell, a benefit performance of Herbert Howells' Requiem and Hubert Parry's Songs of Farewell, under the artistic direction of Deanna Joseph and Ryan Brandau. St. Mary's Catholic Church, 3 Elm St., Northampton MA. Free-will donations will be accepted at the door to benefit the victims of Cyclone Nargis in Burma. Tax-deductible checks can be made payable to Karuna Center for Peacebuilding.
- More
to come in May and June,
- so
please be sure to come back soon.
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