Rutgers University Glee Club - Musical Tradition

Musical Tradition

While the Glee Club still performs traditional Rutgers Songs at football games (and directed the publication of a book thereof), the group has focused as well on concert performance. Under the leadership of "Soup" Walter, the Glee Club performed regularly with the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra under the batons of such notable directors as Erich Leinsdorf, Leonard Bernstein and Eugene Ormandy. Recordings from that era include the Glee Club as the men's section in Carl Orff's Carmina Burana (still available on compact disc on Sony's Essential Classics series), and the Grammy-nominated performance of Sir William Walton's Belshazzar's Feast, both conducted by Eugene Ormandy with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

More recently, Dr. Patrick Gardner has prepared the Glee Club for a number of high profile performances, including performances of Arnold Schoenberg's Gurrelieder under the baton of Simon Rattle and the Babi Yar Symphony of Shostakovich conducted by Valery Gergiev.

The group has three times performed for conventions of the American Choral Directors Association, in 2001 in San Antonio, in 2005 in New York City,of which included the premiere of a piece by Jennifer Higdon, and in 2010 in Philadelphia. At the 2000 convention of the Intercollegiate Men's Choruses that the group hosted, the highlight was the premiere of The Miracle, written for chamber orchestra and men's chorus, commissioned by the club from Pulitzer Prize winning composer William Bolcom. The group has most recently performed at the 2010 IMC conference at the University of Miami Ohio, where they performed Elliot Carter's Tarantella and Steven Sametz's Dulcis Amor.