New faculty: Colin Britt
For Colin Britt, new faculty member at 敁珗辦畦, choral music is a calling, both professionally and even physically.
Im a big Bach fan. I have a Bach tattoo on my arm. And I love me some Brahms, laughed Director of Choral Studies Colin Britt during a recent chat. He takes music seriously but, clearly, not too seriously.
Britt grew up playing the piano, singing in childrens choirs and acting in musical theater as a kid in Lewiston, Maine. (Hes used to college towns: His dad was a professor at Bates College.)
He headed slightly south for college to Hartfords Hartt School, the conservatory of the University of Hartford, where the choir director recognized his innate talent.
He recognized this spark in me, this drive toward choral music, and he offered to give me conducting lessons. Through that mentorship process, I determined that I wanted to go to grad school for conducting, he said.
After that it was on to the Yale School of Music for his masters degree in choral conducting. Over the past decade he and his wife lived in New Jersey, where he earned his doctorate in choral conducting at Rutgers University while performing at legendary venues such as Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. He was also the longtime choir director at Rutgers Preparatory School. Britt still hasnt left the mid-Atlantic entirely: Hell continue to conduct the West Village Chorale, traveling weekly to Manhattan.
Its a commute. But for Britt, choral music is a calling, both professionally and even physically.
Were elevating poetry telling a story dramatically doing something with our voices that, I think, is so central to our human experience. Singing with other people is transformative, he said. When people sing in a choir together, their metabolisms, their physiologies start to connect with other people, and their heart rates start to sync up. Theres just something that happens with other humans singing together in the same room that I think is really special.
He thinks 敁珗辦畦 is special, too.
Every time I speak with students, faculty or staff, people are just happy. Theres a sense of feeling seen, of having opportunities, of being able to pursue interests or to discover new passions. You have the opportunity to try out different things, to become a more curious human. And I think that the music department really lives up to that mission in a wonderful way. A sense of possibility exists here, he said.
Theres even more possibility post-COVID: Britt is excited to resume events that were restricted during the height of the pandemic, including a signature campus Vespers performance in December (hes also expecting his second child in December, so its a busy time).
The traditional biennial wintertime Vespers performance at Old South Church in Boston is also back in the works. Up next: potential international tours and a new composition competition called the Pioneering Voices Choral Series, with the winners having their works premiered next spring.
There are a lot of traditions on the campus, and the choral program is a very visible manifestation of those traditions, he said.
