Robert Cowles, Director

Cantori director Bob Cowles, right, with New York City composer Michael Dellaira who wrote “The Masters on the Movies--Three Dramatic Fantasies for a cappella Chorus” for the Colleges Cantori Commissioning Project

The Hobart and William Smith Colleges Cantori, a mixed chamber vocal ensemble of approximately 16 voices, is committed to the fostering of American contemporary choral music. To this end Cantori commissions and performs annually a new American choral work. The group performs the work several times in the spring of the year, both on campus and as part of the Colleges Chorale’s annual tour.

Guidelines for the commissioned work for 2007-08 are as follows:

• a cappella
• predominately four-part texture (occasional divisi acceptable)
• approximately ten minutes in length
• single- or multi-movement structure
• set to a secular English text
• moderate-to-challenging level of difficulty

Composer George Andoniadis of New York City has been named to write the work for the 2007-08 Cantori Commissioning Project. Andoniadis has composed numerous theater scores and much vocal music, both solo and choral, and has received world premiere performances from the Gregg Smith Singers, the Bowdoin College Chamber Choir, the University of Southern Maine Chamber Singers, and the Choral Art Society of Portland, Maine.

In previous years Cantori has performed new works by Paul Lansky, Michael Dellaira, Scott Gendel, Edie Hill, Craig Weston, Michael Ives, Jan Bach, Carol Barnett, Jacob Avshalomov, Lee R. Kesselman, Paul Fetler, W. Newell Hendricks, and Hobart and William Smith Colleges music professor Nicholas V. D'Angelo, whose Songs . . . I Never Sang for My Father was written for Cantori in 1993 and helped establish the commissioning project as an annual event.

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