The Longfellow Chorus in Press and Review

• Photo at left (by Joe Stellato): Charles Kaufmann conducts The Longfellow Chamber Chorus and the James Caldwell High School Chorus in an April 18, 2010 performance of Kaufmann's award-winning choral setting of the Longfellow poem Snow-Flakes. The event was sponsored by the Caldwell, NJ, Public Library as part of the The Big Read of the National Endowment for the Arts. Read more about this concert, and view more photos, in The Caldwells Patch.
• DIVA—Metropolitan Opera star Angela M. Brown touches down at [The] First Parish [in Portland] to sing arias from "Hiawatha," the sensational 1898 masterwork by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor... that swept the world. How perfect that this long-awaited concert brings Coleridge-Taylor's genius just steps away from the home of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whose epic poem "Hiawatha" was his inspiration. This two-night offering takes music lovers straight to the shores of cool.

  —Portland Monthly Magazine, February/March 2010

• "Each word and each line should be savored, just as we might appreciate a forbidden confection.... Let the words taste delicious in your mouth, like a piece of Godiva chocolate just melting there," opera singer Angela M. Brown told Jesslyn Thomas, a vocal student from the University of Southern Maine.

  —Bob Keyes, USM vocal students get pointers from professional opera singers, February 27, 2010, The Portland Press Herald.

• The Longfellow Chorus, directed by Charles Kaufmann, an excellent orchestra (mostly members of the Portland Symphony), and outstanding soloists soprano Angela M. Brown, baritone Robert Honeysucker, tenor Mark Sprinkle and pianist and organist Geoffrey Wieting turned what could have been a local celebration into a major musical event.... Coleridge-Taylor's "The Death of Minnehaha" (Opus 30, No. 2), written in 1899, was the centerpiece of Sunday's program.... Orchestra, soloists and chorus united to provide what can only be termed a definitive performance of a little-known masterpiece.

  —Christopher Hyde, Concert Review: Longfellow's birthday gives rise to a major musical event, March 2, 2010, The Portland Press Herald.

• Read the Program Notes for the Longfellow Chorus Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 203rd Birthday Choral Concert. This is a large file. All content, text and photos in these program notes are protected through copyright 2010, The Longfellow Chorus, Inc. For permission to quote from these notes please contact Charles Kaufmann


• I believe Longfellow would have been moved to tears of wonder and amazement at the harvest of beauty.... That was a HUGE concert. My being is the more fully alive for its resonance as I launch my 72nd year.

  —An audience member comments about The Longfellow Chorus 203rd Birthday Choral Concert, February 27, 2010

• I and many of my colleagues were impressed with both of the young [Longfellow Chorus International Cantata Competition] composers [Keane Southard and Marcus Maroney].... We applauded the decision to have two winners because the two pieces ["A Day of Sunshine" and "Suspiria"] were so very different and so very effective.

  —An orchestra member comments about The Longfellow Chorus 203rd Birthday Choral Concert, February 28, 2010

• Make no mistake about it: Charles Kaufmann is the Longfellow Chorus. He is its director, fundraiser, promoter, bookkeeper and secretary. Though funding issues may mean 2010 will be its last year, Kaufmann nevertheless has single-handedly revived a lost sub-genre: the music inspired by the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

  —Emily Burnham, Discovering Longfellow, February 23, 2010, The Bangor Daily News.

• I think the performance does great credit to all involved. As a past holder of the office of International Co-ordinator to The Elgar Society, I am delighted that this wonderful — and rarely heard — cantata has received such an excellent and committed performance in America.

  —Paul Adrian Rooke, commenting on the performance of Elgar's The Black Knight by the Longfellow Chorus.

• The concerts were superb — especially the Sunday concert, every second of which was pure joy. The Longfellow settings were expertly and sensitively honed, with heart-warming dedication and masterful musical insight — even now fragments of melody continue to play in my head. As for the Elgar, the music was a revelation, and the performance a sensation. I could tell that the audience realised what a privileged bunch they were. Hearty congratulations to your outstanding chorus, company of musicians — and their inspirational conductor.

  —Kevin Jones, one of the 2008-09 Longfellow Chorus International Composers Competition winning composers

• Charles Kaufmann has single-handedly resurrected an interest in Longfellow and how Longfellow's poetry has been set to music in the past, and, in addition, he has inspired composers world-wide to create new music set to Longfellow's poetry.

  —Lily Gordon, trustee, Longfellow's Wayside Inn National Historic Site




Mission Statement of The Longfellow Chorus, Inc.:

The Corporation shall organize and maintain a chorus to perform and record vocal and choral settings of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poetry, written from 1840 to the present, shall inspire and commission new vocal and choral settings of Longfellow's poetry, and shall perform choral music of the Romantic and immediate post-Romantic eras, ca. 1825-1920.

Materials on this website are protected, copyright 2007-2010, The Longfellow Chorus, Inc., Portland, Maine, USA

Contact The Longfellow Chorus:

e-mail: The Longfellow Chorus

The Longfellow Chorus
c/o Charles Kaufmann
P. O. Box 5133
Portland, Maine 04101

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