President's Welcome

Hello from the hill! My name is Jesse and I am so excited to introduce myself as the President of the Chorus for the 2011-2012 year!  I am a rising senior, with a major in Neurobiology and Behavior and a minor in Music.

The Chorus has had a very exciting year.  In the fall, we performed our annual Twilight Concert, where we premiered this year’s commissioned work, To Music.  This piece is very special to us because it was written by a Cornell alumnus, David Conte, to honor Heather Walters, a beloved Chorus alumna who passed away last year.  We finished out the semester by performing our fourth annual Vespers Service at Sage Chapel to a full house.  This joint tradition with the Glee Club is one of our favorite performances.

In the spring, we continued the work on Bach’s B-minor Mass that we had begun in the fall.  We started off strong with a mini-retreat the weekend before classes began, giving us some good headway on the immense work.  We continued to work on this through the spring, breaking only for our annual tour in March.  This year, we headed north, traveling to Rochester, NY, Toronto, Ottawa, Québec, and Vergennes, VT.  It was so exciting to visit places many of us had never travelled to, and, despite the snow, we really enjoyed ourselves.  We were so happy to see and stay with some of you along the way!  Thank you so much for your support!

Upon our return, we started right back in with preparations for the upcoming Mass.  We suffered a bit of a setback when the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, with whom we were scheduled to perform, folded about two weeks before the concert.  With a great combined effort from the officers and members of both the Chorus and Glee Club, we were able to perform a very well attended concert at St. Paul’s church in downtown Ithaca.

The year ended with our Senior Week Concert and performances at Convocation and Commencement.  We were very sad to say goodbye to fourteen graduating seniors, but know that they will continue on to do great things.  I am so looking forward to continuing the great work they started and working hard to make the Chorus as great as it can be.

I hope that you all have wonderful summers and I look forward to working with you over the next year.  Please don’t hesitate to contact me with any ideas/comments/questions, your advice is invaluable to us!  We couldn’t do it without you!

Best Wishes,

Jesse