Frederick: Cantata on the Life of Frederick Douglass

Brian S. Story was a music educator for forty years. For eight years, he was director of bands at the Alternative School for Math & Science in Corning, NY from which he recently retired. Brian retired from public school teaching after thirty-two years during which he was director of bands at the Canandaigua City Schools and Prattsburgh Central School. His ensembles received numerous awards and recognitions. He was a guest conductor and adjudicator at numerous music festivals, and was sought out for commissions of band and choral works from elementary through college level. He received his B. S. in Music Education and his Masters of Music from Mansfield University in Mansfield Pa. where he studied both vocal and instrumental performance and has been honored as a MU Music Department Alumni of Distinction. Brian also studied choral composition with Dr. Z. Randall Stroope.

Brian was an active composer and performer as an instrumentalist and vocalist. He has numerous published marching band and concert band compositions and arrangements under the pen name Brian Scott (Alfred/Belwin), and choral works under Brian Story (Colla Voce). As a choral/vocal performer he has been a member of Worcester Chorus and Trinity Lutheran Choir (Worcester, MA), Madrigalia (Rochester, NY), Musica Spei (Rochester, NY), was the founder of the Motet Singers (Corning, NY), bass section leader and then choir director at Christ Episcopal Church (Corning, NY). As an instrumentalist, Brian was the conductor of the Finger Lakes Concert Band (Canandaigua, NY), a member of the All Star Big Band (Corning, NY), Southern Tier Wind Ensemble (Elmira, NY), and The Corning Area Community Band (Corning, NY). He is a member of the New York State School Music Association, the National Association for Music Education, the New York State Band Director’s Association, and is a member of ASCAP.

For the past three years, Brian had devoted his life to the writing of “Frederick, Cantata on the Life of and Writings of Frederick Douglass,” whom he revered. He completed the work 2 days before his untimely death.

Founded during the global upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic, the New England Repertory Orchestra is the result of a call amongst musicians in the region to a common purpose and a common love. Staffed with local professionals, a core ensemble was formed with the goal of recruiting a roster of musicians more representative of the diversity we see in our society.

New England Repertory Orchestra knows that music can uplift and sustain hearts, change minds, and catalyze positive and restorative change. NERO honors diverse voices through the performance of both new and past works by underrepresented composers, while offering fresh performances and insights on repertoire by composers that are familiar, as well as feature some of those artists’ historically neglected works.

NERO is committed to being present in our community and engaging it in its programming. We create a place of belonging and a network for symphonic musicians — particularly artists of color — to have an artistic home year-round. ​They are not only professional orchestral musicians — NERO is a connective part of the community, working to be of greater service.

Under the baton of Artistic Director Chris Shepard and Assistant Director & Accompanist Mark Mummert, The Worcester Chorus of Music Worcester numbers approximately 100 professional and amateur singers who perform several times each year, primarily as part of Music Worcester’s season, including an annual performance of Handel’s Messiah. Their repertoire also includes other classical choral pieces, opera, musical theater, American folk songs, and more.

The Worcester Chorus is a key component of THE COMPLETE BACH, Music Worcester’s 11-year project to present all of J.S. Bach’s known works, which concludes in March 2035. A subset of the group, the Worcester Chorus Women’s Ensemble (dir. Mark Mummert) is also featured in the Music Worcester season.

Learn more and see their full schedule.

Cailin Marcel Manson, baritone and conductor, a Philadelphia native, has toured as a soloist and master teacher at major concert venues throughout the United States, Europe and Asia with many organizations, including the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, SWR Sinfonieorchester, Taipei Philharmonic, Bayerische Staatsoper – Münchner Opernfestspiele, Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia, Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, Teatro La Fenice, Teatro San Carlo, Konservatorium Oslo, and the Conservatoire de Luxembourg.

He has also been a guest cantor and soloist at some of the world’s most famous churches and cathedrals, including Notre Dame, Sacré-Coeur, and La Madeleine in Paris, San Marco in Venice, Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, San Salvatore in Montalcino, Santa Maria Maggiore and San Giovanni in Laterano in Rome, Thomaskirche and Nikolaikirche in Leipzig, and Wieskirche in Steingaden.

Cailin has built a sterling reputation over an extensive 20-year career, encompassing both baritone and some tenor repertoire, for his exceptional musicianship, keen dramatic instincts, and vocal flexibility. Critics have praised his performances as “arresting” and “revelatory,” making consistent note of his “ringing projection,” “commanding tone,” (MassLive.com), “lively, original acting skills” (Hudson-Housatonic Arts), and his “ability to bring the internal drama of the music to life” (Scranton Times-Tribune). Recently, Cailin created and premiered the roles of The Hunter in John Aylward’s Oblivion and The Man in Matthew Malsky’s A Dill Pickle, released on New Focus Recordings and Neuma Records within the last year. A founding artist for the Wagner In Vermont Festival, he has performed the role of Kurwenal in Tristan und Isolde, and the complete cycle of Wotan/Wanderer roles in Der Ring des Nibelungen (Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, and Siegfried).

He recently made an acclaimed Carnegie Hall conducting debut with MidAmerica Productions in March 2023, leading Giuseppe Verdi’s Messa da Requiem, becoming the second Black person in the performance history of Carnegie Hall to conduct the work at that historic venue. Shortly thereafter, MidAmerica Productions appointed Cailin as their Artistic Consultant, and he has since returned to Carnegie Hall numerous times to conduct masterworks in performance. He will return to La Madeleine with MidAm International — as a conductor — to lead a centennial performance of Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem in June 2024, at the very site where the work was premiered in 1888 and performed in 1924 for the composer’s state funeral.

An advocate for rarely-heard repertoire and the work of underrepresented composers, Cailin led the New England Premiere of Robert Nathaniel Dett’s The Ordering of Moses, and conducted performances of Luigi Cherubini’s Medea, Robert Aldridge’s Parables, Jules Massenet’s Marie-Magdeleine, William Grant Still’s And They Lynched Him On A Tree, Louise Farrenc’s Symphony No. 3, among many others. He also commissioned and premiered two works by emerging composers of color: the song cycle Unsaid Prayers by Nico Gutierrez, and a full symphonic work by Felix Jarrar, his Symphony No. 1, “Banishing Grief.”
 
Cailin has held positions as Music Director of the Vorarlberger Musikfest, Music Director and Conductor Laureate of the Chamber Symphony of Atlantic City, Artistic Director and Conductor of the Montgomery County Youth Orchestra, Chair of Vocal Studies at the Hazleton Conservatory for the Performing Arts, Director of Music at The Putney School, Music Director of the Bennington County Choral Society, and as Music Director of The Keene Chorale. He has also served as a member of the faculty of the Vermont Governor’s Institute on the Arts and the Performing Arts Institute of Wyoming Seminary. He also founded and directed the Germantown Institute for the Vocal Arts and the Germantown Concert Chorus.

Cailin is a frequent guest conductor, clinician, presenter, panelist, and adjudicator for conventions, conferences, competitions, and music festivals. Cailin studied voice performance at Temple University, and opera performance and orchestral conducting at the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg.

GRAMMY nominated conductor Malcolm J. Merriweather is Director of the New York Philharmonic Chorus and Music Director of New York City’s The Dessoff Choirs and Orchestra. He is Professor and the Tania León Endowed Chair of Music at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.

Merriweather’s 2025-2026 includes four world premieres including preparing the New York Philharmonic Chorus for David Lang’s The Wealth of Nations and Ellen Reid’s Earth Between Oceans. He sings the baritone role in the world premiere of Mark Campbell and Peter Boyer’s A Hundred Years On with The Philadelphia Orchestra and The Crossing and the title role in Frederick with Music Worcester. Celebrating his tenth anniversary with the Dessoff Choirs, he conducts the requiem of Herbert Howells, The World Called by Adolphus Hailstork, Bach’s B minor Mass with period orchestra, a reprise of Tania León’s It’s a journey, and two appearances with Andrea Bocelli at Madison Square Garden.

He is a sought-after interpreter of symphonic choral works most recently conducting grand performances of Bach’s St. John Passion, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, and Handel’s Messiah. In addition to core symphonic works, he is known for the world premiere recordings of The Ballad of the Brown King, Credo, and Simon Bore the Cross by Margaret Bonds (AVIE Records) with The Dessoff Choirs and Orchestra. A frequent guest conductor, he has conducted the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, CHINEKE!, Novus Orchestra and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.

Ensembles under his baton have performed at venues that include Queen Elizabeth II Hall at Southbank Centre, Disney Concert Hall, The Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Madison Square Garden, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Westminster Abbey, and at the Vatican before Pope Francis. At the invitation of Solange Knowles, he joined the interdisciplinary studio and creative agency, Saint Heron, for performances with Voices of Harlem and The Clark Sisters in Glory to Glory: A Revival of Devotional Art.

Dr. Merriweather has earned degrees from Eastman, Manhattan School of Music, and Syracuse University and was a fellow at Tanglewood.