• History
• Conductor
• Soloists

History

When Margaret Hillis left New York and disbanded the American Concert Choir, Milton Goldin, the choir’s manager, and Johannes Somary, the young conductor from Yale who had just moved to New York, decided to continue the tradition of professional choral concerts in New York with the people that had been singing with the ACC. Goldin and Somary tested the waters on April 12, 1961 with the first complete performance in the United States of George Frideric Handel’s oratorio Esther. Critical acclaim for this concert, given in New York’s Town Hall, led to the birth of Amor Artis, a Latin name which means "Love of Art" and which was also the name of a musical ensemble in Renaissance Florence.

During the next two decades, Amor Artis evolved both as an all-professional chorale and as an orchestra whose primary purpose was the accompaniment of the chorale. Concert performances included many New York premieres at Town Hall ranging from Handel’s Theodora to Willy Burkhard’s Das Jahr, from Vivaldi’s Juditha Triumphans to Ernst Toch’s Cantata of the Bitter Herbs. There were also special television appearances which included performances of 20th-century cantatas by Robert Starer, Carlos Surinach, and George Antheil. During the 1970s, the Amor Artis Chorale recorded in London with the English Chamber Orchestra major works including the first recordings ever of Handel’s Theodora and Jephtha, and recordings of Bach’s B-Minor Mass, Bach’s Passion According to Saint Matthew, Mozart’s C-Minor Mass, and Mozart’s Requiem, among many others. Four of these recordings received Stereo-Review Record-of-the-Year awards. In its early years, Amor Artis issued a periodic journal called the Amor Artis Bulletin, sent to libraries and universities throughout the country in part to spread awareness of the ensemble’s existence and also to provide articles of interest for devotees of choral music.

In 1980 Amor Artis became the first New York organization to perform Bach’s B-Minor Mass with a period-instrument orchestra. Once again the critical acclaim given a performance, this time at St. Ignatius Loyola Church (where Johannes Somary was director of music), led to new developments. The activities of Amor Artis expanded as the Amor Artis Chamber Choir was founded with a felicitous blend of professional singers and carefully selected volunteer singers. The Amor Artis Chamber Choir (also known as the Amor Artis Chorus, whenever the number of singers exceeds thirty-five,) was chosen to be the principal chorus at the Madeira Bach Festival for the tercentennial year celebrating the births of Bach and Handel. Since 1985, the Amor Artis Chorus and Orchestra has performed its annual all-Bach gala New-Year’s-Eve concerts at St. Jean Baptiste Church, where the ensemble was in residence until the year 2000. Additional concerts --- first at St. Jean Baptiste Church and since 2000 at Blessed Sacrament Church --- have featured alternatively , according to the exigencies of the program, both the Amor Artis period-instrument Orchestra and the Amor Artis modern-instrument Orchestra. Both ensembles have become increasingly in demand for the accompaniment of choruses other than Amor Artis.

During the 1990s, the Amor Artis Chorus has toured Europe extensively from Ireland (with the Irish Chamber Orchestra) to Estonia (with the XXI Sajandi Orkester). It has sung in New York for special memorial services after 9/11 from the big event at Yankee Stadium to the commemorative concert at St. Patrick’s Cathedral with the Vienna Philharmonic. It has recorded Christmas discs for Vox and for Polygram, "Musica Dei" --- a disc of a-cappella polyphony by Palestrina and Lassus, and a second recording of the Mozart Requiem, this one with period instruments. The all-professional Amor Artis Chorale has continued performing, side-by-side with the Amor Artis Chorus, a wide repertory of music for special liturgical services --- ranging from the famous "Miserere" by Allegri to the contemporary "Magnificat" by Avro Pärt. The chorale has recorded for Albany and for Leonarda music by James Adler, Jeanne Shaffer, and Johannes Somary. After 9/11 it was televised internationally with the Amor Artis Orchestra at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in music by Bach, Haydn, and Fauré.

The year 2005-2006 celebrated the forty-fifth season of Amor Artis. And at the end of the season, in response to an invitation from the Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna, the Amor Artis Chorus sang Mozart's Missa Brevis, K. 220 at the Vienna Cathedral on Sunday, July 9, 2006, culminating its concert tour in Austria and the Czech Republic.

Amor Artis' 2006-2007 season included a unique two-day performance in November of Jewish liturgical music sponsored by the American Society for Jewish Music, Temple Emanu-El New York City, the Park Avenue Synagogue and other Jewish organizations. In March 2007, the chorus performed the world premiere of contemporary composer Mark N. Grant's “The Rose of Tralee,” a complex dramatic cantata based on the Irish tale. In April at Yale's Battell Chapel, the group took part in a program “On Peace and War” that included Haydn's “Mass in Time of War” and David Kraehenbuehl's “Drumfire: A Cantata Against War.” The season ended with Amor Artis' participating in the Connecticut Early Music Festival's 25th anniversary concert performing Handel's “Alexander's Feast.”

November 2007 was marked by another performance of “Alexander's Feast” at New York City's Church of St. Ignatius Loyola. In a March 2008 concert, the group sang an early Renaissance masterpiece: Obrecht's “St. Matthew Passion” and presented the New York premiere of Bonia Shur's “Kohelet.” In May, internationally renowned organist Gail Archer joined the choir in an all-English program commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Ralph Vaughan Williams. The concert featured his “Mass in G Minor” and his “Visions of Aeroplanes.”