As part of our musical experience, the Choral Arts Society of Utah’s Master Chorale (CASU) takes occasional musical performance tours outside of Utah.
These tours are in keeping with our mission to provide an enriching musical experience for our choir members and to bring our brand of musical performances to people outside Salt Lake City and the Wasatch Front. All but one of these “tours” have been in the continental United States.
Several of our choir’s talented and experienced members usually collaborate with outside musical production companies who provide the expertise needed for such tours. Because we are a “community choir”, members pay for most of their expenses associated with such trips. The majority of choir members have participated in these tours.
The choir traveled to Austria in 2006, where we performed multiple times during the celebration of Mozart’s 250th birthday. Our U.S. tours included New York City in 1999 and 2005, Washington, D.C. on Memorial Day in 2011, Helena, Montana in 2012, and New York City again in 2019.
June 1999 The Choral Arts Society of Utah choir joined the New England
Symphonic Ensemble under the direction of Edgar J. Thompson, Chairman of the University of Utah Music Department and Utah Symphony Choral Director in the performance of Haydn’s renowned “Lord Nelson” Mass in the prestigious 110- year old Carnegie Hall in New York City. Also joining the performance was the Utah Symphony Chorus and five other choirs from around the country. Enjoying this rare opportunity of singing in the world-renowned Carnegie Hall was a life time experience for members of the choir.
January 2005 It was our Master Chorale’s privilege to be invited by the Carnegie Hall’s production company to join several other U.S. choirs to perform the Mozart Requiem in Carnegie Hall. Again accompanying the choirs was the New England Symphonic Ensemble conducted by Jonathan Griffith, Music Director for Mid-America Productions. Our choir also performed this major Mozart masterpiece at our Fall concert in October 2004 in preparation for the upcoming New York concert. In June 2004, a successful special Fund Raiser yard sale of donated items was held at Taylorsville High School to help finance this trip. While in New York,
members of the choir and their families and friends shopped, visited the Empire State Building and had a dinner cruise close to the Statue of Liberty.
June 2006 Sixty members of the choir, along with family members, toured
Austria where we performed in Salzburg (the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart), Bad Ischl and Vienna. CASU’s first stop was in Salzburg where we participated in the 2006 Mozart International Choral Festival performed in the Dome of the Church of St. Peter’s Abbey. Our choir, joined by nine other musical organizations from Australia, Hawaii and the United States was directed by conductors, Dr. Eph Ehly of the United States and Maestro Janos Czifra of Austria in performing Mozart’s Missa in C and seven other selected pieces. On the way to Vienna, our choir only stopped in Bad Ischl, where we sang in their Church as part of a Saturday morning Mass and then gave a short concert after. In Vienna’s Votivkirche, we rejoined the other Salzburg choirs in a repeat performance of the Mozart concert. Several choir members opted out of the Vienna concert to make a side trip over the border to Germany. There was, of course, much shopping and sightseeing during this trip.
May 2011 The choir enjoyed the Memorial Day weekend in Washington D.C.
where we performed with the U.S. Army Orchestra in a concert in the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. It was a Memorial Day Festival Chorus celebration consisting of patriotic music. The principal conductor was Utah State University’s Dr. Craig Jessop, former Music Director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir with special guest conductor, Col. Arnold D. Gabriel. Joining CASU’s choir were six other music organizations from around the country. We also were included and sang in the traditional Memorial Day parade. While in Washington D.C., the choir placed a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and toured the Arlington National Cemetery, as well as other historic Washington sights.
May 2012 We were invited to join the Helena, Montana Symphony Orchestra and Chorus under the direction of their conductor, Allan Scott, in performing Gustav Mahler’s 8th Symphony, aka “Symphony of a Thousand”. This was a major undertaking involving eight soloists, the Salt Lake Children’s Choir and the Pocatello, Idaho’s Camerata Singers, in addition to the Choral Arts Society of Utah Master Chorale. Maestro Alan Scott travelled to Salt Lake City several times to assist Sterling Poulson in preparing the choir for the concert. A post-concert reception and earlier river cruise was enjoyed by the choir.
March 2019 The choir revisited New York City where they again were honored to sing in Carnegie Hall. On a rainy Sunday afternoon in March, three soloists and the Dock Mennonite Academy Touring Choir from Lansdale, Pennsylvania joined our choir in performing the Faure Requiem in D Minor, accompanied by the New England Symphonic Ensemble. Sterling Poulson, CASU’s distinguished Director, conducted the concert. This Requiem was chosen to honor Danette Poulson, wife of Sterling and long time member of the choir, who passed away, one year earlier, in March 2018. It was her favorite classical choral music. Much sightseeing was done by choir members and their families. Most notable was Ground Zero, sight of the 9-11-2001 terrorist destruction of the Twin Towers. There were also Broadway plays and a dinner cruise by the Statue of Liberty after our concert.