Bach's B-Minor Mass performed by The Worcester Chorus, Christopher Shepard, Artistic Director

Overview

A glorious masterpiece of choral music, the B-Minor Mass by J. S. Bach is one of the jewels in the crown of the Bach repertoire. Artistic Director, Christopher Shepard shows his prodigious skills on the Festival stage at Mechanics Hall, as he leads the 100+ voices of The Worcester Chorus and guest soloists in one of the most beloved choral masterpieces.

Guest Soloists: Susan Consoli, Soprano; Sabrina Learman, Soprano; Sarah Taylor, Alto; Matthew Anderson, Tenor; and Thomas Jones, Bass.

Joining the Worcester Chorus onstage will be the College of the Holy Cross Chamber Choir (Pamela Mindell, Director) and the early music ensemble The Arcadia Players including Ian Watson, Artistic Director, on organ.

Related Sites

• Sneak Peek at a B-Minor Mass - Worcester Chorus Rehearsal
• The Arcadia Players web site
• Holy Cross Chamber Choir web site

Program

Conductor’s Notes

The history of Bach’s B Minor Mass was, for many years, shrouded in mystery. Why would a Lutheran church composer write an ostensibly Catholic Mass? Why would one of the most inventive composers in western music history resort to reusing so many of his own compositions in the setting of the Mass, particularly at a time when his duties in Leipzig were lighter than they had been in his earlier years? And why does it seem that the work was never performed in Bach’s lifetime—or even, as some suggest, never even intended to be performed at all?

The dating of the work, which presented difficulties for scholars for over two centuries, gives a good clue towards answering some of these questions. Recent scholarship has allowed musicologists to assert that the B Minor Mass was in fact one of the last pieces that Bach wrote, being compiled between 1748 and 1749. As Bach advanced in age, his “encyclopedic” tendencies, already prominent earlier in his life, became stronger. He compiled several collections of works, such as the Art of the Fugue, which explored all the possibilities inherent in fugal writing, the Clavier-Übung, his great collection of keyboard works, and he composed the Christmas Oratorio, like the B Minor Mass, largely a collection of movement parodied from earlier cantatas.  In this, Bach was squarely a product of his age: the urge to draw together large collections and explain large patterns was part of the Baroque mindset, reflected especially in the sciences, mathematics, and philosophy of the era.

So it makes sense, then, that as Bach approached the end of his life (he was well into his sixties at this point), he would wish to join the ranks of the historical composers he venerated, such as Palestrina, whose Missa sine nomine he performed in 1742, by composing a full Mass setting. His compositional plan for the work ranks amongst the most ambitious in the history of western music: he set out to catalogue all the vocal styles that were available to that point, from the Renaissance polyphony of the Credo in unum Deum and Confiteor in unum baptisma (including references to the even earlier Gregorian chants) to the brilliant Baroque stile concertato writing of the Gloria in excelsis and Et resurrexit to the intimations of the newly fashionable style galant in the first duet, Christe eleison.

The question of whether this was a Lutheran or Roman Catholic Mass is, in the end, a moot one. The final product is in fact a catholic Mass—catholic in the sense that it is all-embracing, universal and above sectarianism. Like the great writers of natural philopsophy and rational metaphysics of the seventeeth and eighteenth centuries, such as Leibniz, Wolff and Spinoza, Bach searched for rationalization of God’s creation. The first step in this rationalization was observation and reflection: by reflecting back the organization of nature, through philosophical, scientific or mathematical (including musical) systems, the hand behind the system of systems would be revealed. Such a philosophy is at the core of the encyclopedic B Minor Mass: by representing all of what was possible musically, and organizing it in patterns designed to reflect nature’s own design, the Creator would be revealed, as if in a mirror, in the reflection of the creation.

In this light, Bach’s use of previous material seems almost inevitable, for this Mass is encyclopedic not only in representing all the historical vocal forms, but also in collecting the best examples of Bach’s own compositions over a lifetime. In compiling this work, he mined his personal archives of music from 1714-1749. There is no sense of gratuitous re-use of material here; on the contrary, each movement is reworked in such a way that it seems as if each choice is the perfect one. In most cases, the original Affekt, or emotional meaning, of the original is directly related to the Mass text, such as in the Gratias agimus tibi, “We give you thanks”, which originated as Wir danken dir, which also translates as “We thank you.” The text changes, but the original musical meaning remains the same.

As for whom Bach intended to perform the full Mass, that remains a mystery. He wrote the Kyrie and Gloria in 1733 and presented it to the Elector in Dresden, hoping to receive an honorary court title (which he received belatedly a few years later), but there is no record of a performance in Dresden. The fact that the Dresden court was Roman Catholic suggests that Bach always intended this work to be part of Catholic liturgy, and the court choir and orchestra were of a very fine standard. But, always practical, Bach used nearly all of the movements in Leipzig, where the liturgy included nearly all of the Latin sections of the Mass on feast-days. Although there was never a performance of the full Mass, individual movements were performed on many occasions, and Bach reworked three movements of the Gloria into a Christmas cantata, BWV 191, Gloria in excelsis.

As a performer, there is something faintly reassuring about the fact that this work remained unperformed in Bach’s lifetime. By being released from the more prosaic history of a single performance, the performer feels connected instead to the universal aspect of this work—that it exists in a fresh, contemporary way for each new generation, open to reinterpretation as each new performance strives to reflect the Baroque ideal of revealing nature’s perfection.

Chris Shepard

About the Artists

The Worcester Chorus, under the sponsorship of Music Worcester, has the distinction of being one of the most distinguished ongoing choral groups in the United States. Founded in 1858 to sing in the first Worcester Music Festival, the 100+ member chorus includes singers from Worcester County, northern Connecticut, Rhode Island, and the Boston area. Its repertoire has included traditional choral masterworks, contemporary literature - including commissioned works, arrangements of American folk songs, and musical theater classics. The singers perform annually in the Handel's Messiah, a highlight of the Worcester Music Festival. The Worcester Chorus season includes 3-4 major choral performances every year. 

The Worcester Chorus has appeared with the Hartford Symphony, the American Symphony at Avery Fisher Hall in the Lincoln Center, and the Prague Symphony at Carnegie Hall. The Chorus performed at the 1992 American Choral Directors Association Eastern Division Convention in Boston, and has appeared at the Worcester Music Festival with the Philadelphia Orchestra, The Rochester Philharmonic, and the symphonies of Boston, Baltimore, and Detroit. For additional information, visit the Worcester Chorus web site at www.worcesterchorus.com. 

In recent years, Artistic Director and conductor Christopher Shepard has been most associated with the choral music of Johann Sebastian Bach. He founded the Sydneian Bach Choir and Orchestra in Sydney, Australia, and was the music director of BACH 2010, a project to perform all of Bach’s choral cantatas. Under his direction, the ensemble performed over seventy-five cantatas, as well as the two Passions, B-Minor Mass, and Christmas Oratorio. A Sydney reviewer wrote of the cantata series that “these well-attended events, using a fine choir and perceptive soloists, are high points in our musical terrain.”

In addition to the music of J.S. Bach, Chris has conducted many staples of the choral-orchestral repertoire, and he has commissioned and premiered a number of new choral works in both Australia and America. Chris was recently named Music Director of the Dessoff Choirs, one of New York City’s most venerable choral organizations. They perform regularly with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and have long had a commitment to new music. Since returning to America, Chris has also been a guest conductor at Emmanuel Church in Boston, a church renowned for its three-decade Bach cantata project. He currently serves as Music Director of the First Congregational Church in Watertown, CT. He has conducted avocational choirs for more than two decades, including the Stamford MasterSingers, Greater Middletown Chorale, and Waterbury Chorale in Connecticut.

Resident in Sydney from 1996 to 2008, Chris served as Director of Music at Sydney Grammar School, one of Australia’s most prominent high schools. Music education has been a major focus of his career; before moving to Sydney, Chris led the choral program at the Taft School in Connecticut, where his Collegium Musicum appeared at the 1994 ACDA Eastern Division convention. The Litchfield County Children’s Choir, which he founded in 1990, continues to thrive after nearly two decades. Since 2004, Chris has been Music Director of the Hotchkiss Summer Portals Chamber Music Program, an intensive chamber music program for advanced young players and singers from around the world. He conducts the chamber orchestra and choir, serving on the faculty alongside such guest ensembles as the Shanghai Quartet, the Brentano String Quartet, and Cantus. Over the last two decades, Chris has given several presentations for the American Choral Directors’ Association and has conducted several high school regional festival choirs in New England.

With SBS-TV, an Australian national public television network, Chris presented two documentaries: Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and From Mozart to Morrison with eminent Australian jazz musician James Morrison. The Melbourne Age recommended the Mozart documentary as a “novel, thoughtfully produced hour”. In 2000, Chris was chorusmaster with the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs for their performance in the Olympics Opening Ceremony. Throughout his years in Sydney, Chris worked with a wide range of school and community choirs as conductor and clinician.

Chris holds degrees from the Hartt School and the Yale School of Music, where he studied choral conducting with Marguerite Brooks. He is currently completing his PhD in Musicology at the University of Sydney, researching the performance history of Bach’s B Minor Mass in 20th century America. updated June 2010

Soprano, Susan Consoli’s active career in oratorio, opera and recital have led her throughout the United States and abroad. She has worked under such notable conductors as Craig Smith, John Harbison, Bruno Weil, Grant Llewellyn, Laurence Cummings, John Finney, William Jon Gray, Tom Hall, and Ryan Turner, as well as director/choreographer Chen Shi-Zheng and choreographer Tero Saarinen. She has been a soloist in Emmanuel Music’s Bach Cantata Series since 2005 as well as soloist with the Carmel Bach Festival since 2004. 

This season’s solo engagements include: the role of Vera Mater in Charpentier’s Judicium Salomonis with Ensemble Abendmusik, Bach Magnificat and Purcell The Masque from Dioclesian with the Handel & Haydn Society, Handel Salve Regina at Harvard University’s Busch Hall with James David Christie, Handel Dixit Dominus and Jonathan Dove Koethener Messe with Chorus Pro Musica, Haydn Lord Nelson Mass and Handel Dettigen Te Deum with the Concord Chorale, and Bach BWV 14, 21, 23, 99 with Emmanuel Music. Additionally she will premiere John Harbison’s A Clear Midnight this spring and is a featured soloist with the Handel & Haydn Society next season performing Novello Thy Mighty Force and Schubert Die Forelle. Susan can be heard on the Handel & Haydn Society recording of All is Bright for Avie Records. Ms. Consoli is a member of the voice faculty at both Phillips Exeter Academy and Phillips Academy of Andover.

Soprano Sabrina Learman performs frequently as a soloist in the Boston area. An advocate for new music, Learman has premiered many works and has sung everything from Bach to Schoenberg and beyond. A founding member of the highly acclaimed Chameleon Arts Ensemble, she has been a soloist with a variety of groups, including First Mondays in Jordan Hall, Composers in Red Sneakers, the Enchanted Circle Series, the Nashua Symphony, Boston Chamber Ensemble, Opera New England, The Zamir Chorale of Boston, Wellesely Choral Society, and the Avenue of the Arts Chorale. Learman has been heard live on WGBH Radio, and has recorded for the Discovery Channel, and with Boston Baroque, with whom she has been singing for more than fifteen years. Collaborations with composers and musicians include Yehudi Wyner, Barbara White, David Leisner, Alan Fletcher, and Tatyana Dudochkin.When not performing, Learman has a passion for teaching, and is a member of the voice faculty at Emerson College’s BFA Musical Theater program and New England Conservatory Preparatory and Continuing Education Schools, in addition to maintaining a private studio. Beginning fall 2011, Learman will be teaching a course in New England Conservatory's Entrepreneurial Musicianship Department. Summer teaching includes the Fusion Arts Exchange Program (at Northeastern University), Emerson College Pre-College Musical Theatre Program, and Creative Arts at Park.

Sarah Rose Taylor, mezzo-soprano, a native of Great Britain, has appeared as a recitalist in France, Italy, and the United States. This season she is singing the role of the Israelitish Man in Handel's Judas Maccabeus and Une récitante in Debussy's La Damoiselle Élue, with the Queens College Chorus, the mezzo role in Bach's B Minor Mass with the Worcester Chorus, and she is performing Elgar's Sea Pictures in a recital at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Columbia, South Carolina. On the operatic stage, this season, Ms. Taylor will be singing the roles of La Badessa in Puccini's Suor Angelica with the Queens College Opera Studio, Dorabella in Mozart's Così fan tutti with the Classical Singers Development Club, and she will also appear in Pocket Opera, New York's performance of Rameau's Platée. She has performed with the Amalfi Coast Music Festival in Italy, Queens College Opera Studio, Hunter College Opera Studio, and dell'arte opera ensemble. Ms Taylor has sung the roles of Marcellina in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, Dritte dame in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, and Sally in Barber’s A Hand of Bridge. This past summer she covered Dritte knabe in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte with dell'arte opera ensemble. As an oratorio soloist, Ms. Taylor has sung the solos roles in Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s Mass in Time of War, and Arvo Pärt's Passio with The Dessoff Choirs. In France, Ms. Taylor was a soloist with several ensembles, including the Wells Consort and the Choir of the American Cathedral in Paris. She has degrees in French Studies from the British Institute in Paris, a Maîtrise in French Language Teaching from the Sorbonne, and a Masters degree in Vocal Performance from the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College. For more information please visit www.sarahrosetaylor.com.

accomplished interpreter of the music of Bach, Mr. Anderson sings regularly as a soloist in Boston’s renowned Emmanuel Music Bach Cantata Series. He appeared at the Aldeburgh Festival as a soloist in the Saint Matthew Passion and spent several summers at the Carmel Bach Festival, where he was featured as a 2010 Virginia Best Adams Fellow and a 2011 festival soloist in the Saint John Passion. Mr. Anderson is a two-time prizewinner in the American Bach Society Competition and winner of the second prize in the Oratorio Society of New York Solo Competition, in which he also won the Westenberg Award for 18th Century Stylistic Interpretation. Recent performances from Mr. Anderson’s varied repertoire include Stravinsky’s Renard at Tanglewood and the Mostly Mozart Festival with the Mark Morris Dance Group; John Harbison’s Winter’s Tale with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project; Haydn’s Creation with Emmanuel Music; Bach’s Saint John Passion (Evangelist) at Princeton University and the University of Chicago; and several works by Benjamin Britten (Serenade, Saint Nicolas, and Cantata Misericordium). In the coming months, he will create the role of Abelard in John Austin’s new opera Heloise and Abelard at Harvard University and appear in Handel’s Messiah at Carnegie Hall. He has sung with conductors Masaaki Suzuki, Paul Goodwin, Harry Christophers, John Harbison, Craig Smith, and Laurence Cummings and appeared as soloist with the Handel and Haydn Society, Cantata Singers, Musicians of the Old Post Road, Back Bay Chorale, the New Bedford Symphony, and the Handel Choir of Baltimore. Also recognized as a gifted performer of the American songbook, Mr. Anderson won high praise for his performances with Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops in Carousel (as Mr. Snow), A Richard Rogers Celebration, and An Evening of Cole Porter. Mr. Anderson spent two seasons as a vocal fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center and was a Lorraine Hunt Lieberson Fellow with Emmanuel Music. He also trained in the James Collier Apprentice Artist Program at Des Moines Metro Opera, the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme, and the Cincinnati Opera Resident Ensemble. He was a finalist in the Liederkranz Art Song Competition. Mr. Anderson is a Kansas native and resides in Boston, where he studied Classics at Harvard and voice at the New England Conservatory. 

Baritone Thomas Jones has appeared with orchestras, opera companies, choral ensembles, and on recital series throughout North America, Europe, and the West Indies. Richard Buell of The Boston Globe calls the vocal and stage presence of Thomas Jones "irresistible." Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times proclaims that Mr. Jones sings "with plush sounds and musical vigor." Solo engagements include Santa Fe Symphony, The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, San Francisco's Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Boston's Handel & Haydn Society, The Apollo Chorus of Chicago, The San Francisco City Chorus and Orchestra, The Vancouver Chamber Choir, The Canadian Broadcast Orchestra, The Phoenix Bach Choir, The Phoenix Chamber Orchestra, New York's St. Cecilia Orchestra, Baltimore Choral Arts Society, The Pacific Chorale, The Pacific Symphony in Southern California, The Louisville Bach Society at The Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts, The Masterworks Chorus, the Orchestra of Washington, DC, The Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic Orchestra, The Bucks County Choral Society, and The Philadelphia Festive Arts Orchestra under conductor Robert Page. Festival appearances include Saratoga Performing Arts Center, Berkshire Choral Festival, The Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival, Great Waters Music Festival, and Monadnock Music. Opera companies include Boston Lyric Opera, The Harrisburg Opera Company of Pennsylvania, and Opera New England. In the Boston area, appearances include The Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, Boston Civic Orchestra, The Back Bay Chorale, Coro Allegro, The Worcester Symphony, The Nashua Symphony, The Masterworks Chorale, and Cape Cod Symphony. Mr. Jones has appeared with well over 150 choruses throughout the United States, appearing under the baton of notable maestros such as Christopher Hogwood, Nicholas McGegan, Thomas Dunn, John Alexander, Jon Washburn, Daniel Beckwith, Joel Revzen, Robert Page, John Oliver, Tom Hall, Gerald Mack, Jung-Ho Pak, and Stephen Simon. In the summer of 2000, Mr. Jones sang a concert tour of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, including performances at Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen.  Thomas Jones was a semifinalist in the International Bel Canto Foundation Vocal Competition and a semifinalist in the New York Oratorio Competition.

 

Over the past twenty years, Arcadia Players has established itself as one of the most creative, visionary, and exciting ensembles, not only in Western Massachusetts, but for many miles around. Lauded by the press, their unique blend of historical performance practice and expert musicians makes for both sophisticated and passionate performances. Under the leadership of world-renowned Early Music specialist Ian Watson and playing on period instruments, Arcadia Players bring new light and life to repertoire ranging from Monteverdi and seventeenth century music for viols, to chamber music by Schumann and Weber, as well as Haydn and Beethoven, symphonies. No other group in Massachusetts offers such diverse repertoire played on instruments of the period.

Described by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as "a conductor of fomidable ability," and by The Times in London as a keyboard performer with "virtuosic panache and brilliantly articulated playing" and "a world-class soloist," Ian Watson is a prominent figure at the highest levels of the international music scene. Artistic Director of the acclaimed period-instrument ensemble Arcadia Players and Chorus, Music Director of Commonwealth Opera, Principal Guest Conductor of Karlstad Baroque in Sweden, and Music Director of the Cathedral of St. Paul, Worcester, Ian's versatility is revealed in the equal ease with which he performs the roles of orchestral conductor, choral director, organist, harpsichordist, pianist, teacher, and public speaker.

Born in England in the Buckinghamshire village of Wooburn Common, Ian won a scholarship to the Junior School of the Royal Academy of Music in London, at the age of 14. He later won all the prizes for organ performance and others for piano accompaniment including the coveted Recital Diploma, the highest award for performance excellence. He completed his studies with Flor Peeters in Belgium. As a distinguished graduate, he was honored in 1993, with an Associateship of the Royal Academy of Music, in recognition of his services to music and he is also a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists. Ian's first major appointment was as Organist at St. Margaret's, Westminster Abbey, at the age of 19, a position he held for ten years and he has also held a number of important positions in London including Organist of St. Marylebone Parish church, and Music Director of the historic Christopher Wren Church, St. James's Piccadilly.

Ian's many prestigious conducting engagements include Monteverdi's Vespers at St. James's Palace in the presence of Her Majesty the Queen; Bach's B Minor Mass at the Rheingau Festival with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Orchestra and Chorus; the opening concerts of the newly renovated Châtelet Theater in Paris with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and tours with Nigel Kennedy and the English Chamber Orchestra of Bruch and Mozart concerti. He was assistant conductor, organ and harpsichord soloist, and continuo player for Sir John Eliot Gardiner's Bach Cantata Pilgrimage, performing all Bach's Cantatas on the correct liturgical day in places where Bach lived and worked. He has appeared as organ, harpsichord, and piano soloist or conductor with the London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, Polish Chamber Orchestra, Irish Chamber Orchestra, Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Bremen Philharmonic, Rhein-Main Symphony Orchestra, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Handel and Haydn Society, English Baroque Soloists, and The Sixteen amongst many others. He has also been featured on more than 200 recordings and film soundtracks including Amadeus, Polanski's Death and the Maiden, Restoration, Cry the Beloved Country, Voices from a Locked Room, BBC's David Copperfield, and an award-winning CD with Renee Fleming.

Ian has had a career-long passion for opera, working first as a vocal coach and conductor at Glyndebourne, and subsequently conducting countless performances of over fifty operas throughout England, and internationally at Sadler's Wells, The Royal Festival Hall, Bremen Opera, Giessen Opera, the Komische Opera in Berlin, houses in France and Scandinavia, and as a Principal Conductor with the Darmstadt State Opera in Germany in repertoire ranging from Monteverdi and Handel to Richard Strauss's Elektra and Birtwhistle's Punch and Judy. 

The Holy Cross College Chamber Choir is a mixed (SATB) group of roughly sixty undergraduate singers from all across the Holy Cross campus. While there are a handful of music majors in the group, the choir is open, by audition, to any student in any class year. The College Choir is the College's concert and touring chorus. It maintains a vigorous, challenging schedule, including performances of major choral/orchestral masterworks of the Western Classical tradition, as well as lighter selections. Typically, the Choir performs three to four concerts on campus each year in the stunning St. Joseph Memorial Chapel. Highlights of each season include the annual Family Weekend Concert as well as the Advent Festival of Lessons and Carols.

In the Fall of 2005, the College Choir was joined by renowned soprano Dawn Upshaw, and Venezuelan conductor Maria Guinand in a concert of Sacred Latin American music, featuring excerpts from Holy Cross composer Osvaldo Golijov's Passion According to St. Mark. Other recent performances include Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem, Beethoven’s Mass in C Major, Verdi’s Requiem, Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, Mozart's Coronation Mass, Regina Coeli, and excerpts from La Clemenza di Tito. In addition, the Choir had the opportunity to perform in both Saint Peter’s Basilica and the Chiesa Il Gesù in Rome in May, 2006, as part of a concert tour to Rome and Tuscany. In May, 2007, the Choir embarked on a concert tour of the Northeast Corridor, including concerts in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. In August, 2007, sixteen members of the Choir performed Osvaldo Golijov's Passion According to St. Mark in its entirety with the Schola Cantorum of Caracas, Venezuela, as part of the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center. The Choir traveled to Spain in May, 2009 to perform in Madrid, Seville, Granada, and Malaga; and in May of 2011, the Choir will return to New York City and Washington D. C.

Pamela Getnick Mindell, Conductor at the College of the Holy Cross, is a graduate of the Yale University School of Music, where she received her doctorate in Choral Conducting. While at Yale, Dr. Mindell studied with Marguerite Brooks and David Connell and conducted both the Yale Freshman Chorus and the Yale Glee Club. Under her direction, both choruses performed the Mozart Requiem and the Rachmanioff Vespers.

Prior to taking up her conducting post at Holy Cross, Dr. Mindell was a member of the Music faculty at Smith College where she led choirs and taught conducting. She also spent a year as a Visiting Choral Fellow at the Ascham School and Sydney Grammar School in Sydney, Australia, conducting several choirs and singing professionally in prominent Sydney ensembles. Since that time, she has been invited back to Sydney as guest conductor and soloist for the 2003 and 2005 Sydney Grammar Bach Festivals. Dr. Mindell has worked with a number of children's choirs, including the Litchfield County Children's Choir in Connecticut and the Paradise City Children's Choir, which she founded in 2001. As a soprano soloist, Dr. Mindell has performed in several duet recitals with mezzo-soprano Justina Golden as part of the Smith College Faculty Concert Series. She also sings with the Boston Secession, a 24-voice chamber choir in Boston. Finally, she serves as Artistic Director for the Hotchkiss Summer Portals Vocal Chamber Ensembles Program for high school students.

Dr. Mindell also holds a master's degree in music education from the Hartt School as well as a bachelor's degree in psychology from Princeton University.