SVS faculty member to offer presentation on OCA Liturgical Music chat room Tuesday, May 16, 2006

SYOSSET, NY [OCA Communications] — Mr. Mark Bailey, instructor in liturgical music at Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, Crestwood, NY, will be the guest presenter on the Orthodox Church in America’s liturgical music chat room session on Tuesday, May 16, 2006 from 8:30 EDT until 9:30 p.m.

Mr. Bailey will discuss musical exercises and the development of choral skills. He also will discuss the selection of appropriate music, ways to achieve the proper balance between parts [whether four-part, two-part, unision, etc.], how to test singers’ voices, and the placement of singers.
his life and experiences as a choir director in Russia and in the US and will offer insights and practical advice to choir directors and singers alike.

The chat room, open to all choir directors, singers, and other individual interested in Orthodox Christian liturgical music, is sponsored by the OCA Department of Liturgical Music and Translations.

To access the chatroom, log on to http://www.oca.org and follow the links to the liturgical music section. Once there, scroll down to the chatroom link and follow the instructions.

Mark Bailey is broadly experienced in the choral, orchestral, and operatic repertoires, with special emphasis on Orthodox liturgical music, especially from the Slavic tradition. He was appointed artistic director of the Yale Russian Chorus (YRC) in 1995. Mr. Bailey also serves as music director of the New Haven Oratorio Choir, a period-style choral and instrumental ensemble specializing in 18th century music as well as other genres, and, beginning in 2005-2006, he will become music director of the Westchester Concert Singers (in-residence at Pace University, where he is also being given a faculty position). His former positions include music director of the Manchester Symphonic Chorale, co-founder and director of the New England Benefit Orchestra, assistant conductor for the Heidelberg Castle Opera Festival, Heidelberg, Germany, and music director of the Festival Chamber Orchestra at Yale. In 1992 Mr. Bailey was an orchestral conducting fellow at the Conductors Institute, Hartford, Connecticut, where he worked closely with several prominent American composers, including Pulitzer prize winner Stephen Albert, shortly before Mr. Albert’s death.

Mr. Bailey’s work with the YRC is documented on Chants and Carols, an internationally released recording that has received critical acclaim and was placed on the New York Times “Critic’s Choice list” in 1996, as well as recommended as a “must have” by National Public Radio’s Performance Today and Billboard Magazine, among others. He has also conducted on gala performances at Carnegie Hall, receiving praise from New York Times critic Bernard Holland. Mr. Bailey has also been noted by the New York Times as a leading expert in the field of Slavic sacred music, a topic on which he frequently lectures throughout the country, including at Lincoln Center and at several prominent universities and institutions.

Currently, Mark Bailey serves on the faculty of St Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary, Crestwood, New York, where he conducts weekly and teaches composition, choral leadership techniques, and voice. He is published on a variety of topics related to Orthodox liturgical music. He also leads seminars for Orthodox musicians on conducting, singing, and composition. Mr. Bailey, who sits on the Board of Directors for PSALM, a pan-Orthodox organization of liturgical musicians, which he co-founded, is also music editor of Psalm Notes, editor of PSALM’s forthcoming journal, and a CD reviewer for Musica Russica.

Additionally, Mr. Bailey is a prolific composer of instrumental and choral/vocal music. Most of his compositions, in fact, are written for Orthodox liturgy. His works, many of which are commissioned and published, have been premiered at Lincoln Center, Yale University, Boston’s renowned Emmanuel Church, throughout the North America, and at St Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow, and his liturgical settings are sung in churches throughout North America and abroad. He is co-founder of the Benchmark Performance Series on Cape Cod and created the annual Slavic Choral Festival at Yale. Mr. Bailey’s music performance degrees were earned at the Eastman School of Music (1984), and the Yale School of Music/Yale Institute of Sacred Music (1989), where he also studied liturgy and Russian. His former teachers include Aidan Kavanagh (liturgy), Marguerite Brooks, Harold Farberman, and David Effron.