The acclaimed Fairfield University Glee Club is preparing for a March concert tour of Italy that includes performances in Rome, Assisi and Florence. On Sunday, March 5, the 55-member touring choir, under the direction of its director, Dr. Carole Ann Maxwell, will give the University community and local residents a preview of selections it will perform on the tour at the 9 p.m. Mass at Egan Chapel on the Fairfield University campus.

Fairfield's president, Rev. Jeffrey von Arx, S.J., and several members of the University community and Glee Club alumni, will accompany the group on the tour. Concert venues include Rome's Chiesa Del Gesu and Cavalieri Di Malta, St. Francis Basilica in Assisi, and Florence's San Lorenzo Basilica.

The full Glee Club is a mixed chorus of more than 90 undergraduate and graduate students continuing a 59-year legacy of musical excellence on campus and abroad. The choir has performed at Carnegie Hall, the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., Westminster Cathedral in London, the Aula Paolo VI at the Vatican and the U.S. Military academies at West Point and Annapolis.

Dr. Maxwell, director of Choral and Liturgical Music for Fairfield University since 1980, is also the artistic director and conductor of The Mendelssohn Choir of Connecticut and chorus master of The Greater Bridgeport Symphony Orchestra. She has conducted choruses for the Prague Radio Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Philadelphia Lyric Opera Orchestra, the Connecticut Grand Opera and Orchestra and the Yale Opera Ensemble.

She has shared the stage with jazz icon Dave Brubeck and the Dave Brubeck Quartet, opera legends Sherrill Milnes, Marilyn Horne and Renee Fleming, and composers Stephen Schwarz, Stephen Sondheim and Charles Strouse. For the second year, she has been named one of the distinguished conductors at the celebrated "Messiah Sing-In" at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center.

Posted On: 02-16-2006 10:02 AM

Volume: 38 Number: 169