This professional choir was founded by the conductor Dale Warland in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1972 after he had been asked to form a choir of a concert of new music at Minneapolis’s Walker Art Center. He put together 40 singers that went through an audition stage and were chosen by their positivity, the sound and technique of their voice and their musical ability.
Although specialising in 20th century music the choir performed much of the choral repertoire from all ages of music. It also commissioned 270 works by 150 American composers such as Dominick Argento, Alice Parker, Stephen Paulus, Peter Schickele, George Shearing, Janike Vandervelde and Eric Whitacre to name just a few. It also established Choral Ventures which is a reading and commissioning program for new composers.
Conductors and ensembles it worked with include the Dave Brubeck Quartet, Chanticleer, Sir Neville Marriner, Bobby McFerrin, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Robert Shaw, Leonard Slatkin, Edo de Waart, Hugh Wolff among many others.
The DWS performed several hundred concerts, often at the Walker Art Center and on numerous tours of America and Europe, before it was disbanded when Dale Warland retired It’s final concert was in 2004 at the Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis with it entitled “I Have Had Singing: A Choral Celebration”. Honouring the choir, the Dale Warland Singers Fund for New Choral Music was established by the American Composers Forum in 2004.
During it’s career the DWS recorded 29 CDs which included the Grammy nominated Walden Pond along with others such as Echoes of Christmas, Americana: A Bit of Folk, Swedish Choral Ballads, Stephen Paulus: Carols from Christmas, Christmas Echoes Vol. 1 and 2, A Rose in Winter, Bernstein & Britten, Rachmaninoff Vespers, Reincarnations and Harvest Home: Songs from the Heart. The choir appeared on the film soundtracks of The Garden of Redemption and My Best Friend’s Wedding, on radio broadcasts at Christmas and on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion.
The choir won the ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming four times between 1992 and 1999 and won the Margaret Hillis Achievement Award for Choral Excellence in 1992. Their archives are now stored at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.
Dale Warland Singers recordings
Three Nativity Carols: The Holly and the Ivy, This Endris Night, Wonder Tidings
Gothic 49208 (CD: Christmas with the Dale Warland Singers)
Arranger – Stephen Paulus
Conductor – Dale Warland
Oboe – Kathleen Robinson
Harp – Kathy Kienzie
Sources:
- http://www.dalewarlandsingers.org/”>http://www.dalewarlandsingers.org/
- https://dalewarland.com/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Warland_Singers
- https://www.allmusic.com/artist/dale-warland-singers-mn0001955595#biography
- https://www.singers.com/group/Dale-Warland-Singers/
- https://ccm.uc.edu/areas-of-study/academic-units/choral-studies/dalewarland-archive.html
- http://ead.ohiolink.edu/xtf-ead/view?docId=ead/OhCiUAR0010.xml&query=&brand=default
- https://saintpaulsunday.publicradio.org/features/dale_warland_archives/index.html
- https://chorusamerica.org/awards/dale-warland-singers-commission-award
- https://www.allmusic.com/album/christmas-with-the-dale-warland-singers-mw0000136252#credits
- https://www.discogs.com/artist/1509641-Dale-Warland-Singers