Yale’s connect with St Mary’s, Chennai
When it performs at Chennai’s St Mary’s Church for the Sunday Service on March 19, the Yale Schola Cantorum (Schola), Yale University’s internationally renowned chamber choir, will highlight an important bond forged with India over a wedding that took place more than 300 years ago. It was in this oldest Anglican church east of the Suez and the oldest British building in India, in 1680, that a certain Elihu Yale married Catherine Hynmer the first wedding to be performed in the church.
A vestryman (church committee member) and treasurer of St Mary’s, Yale was an Americanborn British merchant with the East India Company. He came to India in 1672 and went on to become governor at Fort St. George, the company’s post at Madras. On his return to England he donated 417 books, a portrait of King George I, and goods worth £800 (about `65,000 now) to the Collegiate School of Connecticut – which was renamed Yale in his honour.
Schola begins its tour of India from March 12 to 19, holding performances in Delhi, Mumbai, and Chennai. It performs sacred music from the sixteenth century to the present day in concert settings and choral services around the world. Sponsored by the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, Schola is conducted by David Hill, one of Europe’s leading conductors who has been chief conductor of the BBC Singers, musical director of the Bach Choir, and Master of the Music at Winchester and Westminster Cathedrals in UK. He has a discography of over a hundred recordings and has been on the Yale faculty since 2013.
The choir is open to all Yale students, including undergraduates and graduate students in all disciplines and professional schools. They are selected by auditions at the beginning of the academic year and get stipends. About 30 of them will be coming to India on the India tour. Early music ensemble Juilliard415 will also tour with Schola and Hill is expected to lead with performances of JS Bach’s Magnificat, instrumental works by Rameau, Telemann, and Bach, and the premiere performances of a newly-commissioned work by Indian American composer Reena Esmail, a graduate of both Yale and Juilliard.
Esmail’s interests embrace both estern and Hindustani (north Indian) classical music. In 2011-2012 she was a recipient of a Fulbright-Nehru grant, and moved to Delhi, where she was affiliated with the Faculty of Music and Fine Arts at Delhi University and studied Hindustani vocal music with musician Gaurav Mazumdar.