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

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:

2002-2003      2003-2004     2004-2005     2005-2006     Spring 2007    Fall 2007

• 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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