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About the World Choral Spectacular
Every three years, the planet's best choirs vie to perform at the World Choral Symposium. This blue-ribbon choral festival touches down at a new location each time, and in 2005 Kyoto, Japan hosted 24 phenomenal choirs. American Public Media was at the Symposium and has now created this four-part 'best-of-the-best' broadcast series called World Choral Spectacular II. (WCS I was broadcast in 2003.) The repertoire centers on traditional choral singing that U.S. public radio listeners will find familiar, but each program also holds brief, delightful musical surprises as well; for instance, a haunting Islamic song from Turkey, or an improvised Norwegian folktune. The unifying factor throughout this series is quality: every one of these performances is breathtaking.
Brian Newhouse, Host, Producer
Peabody Award-winner Brian Newhouse was the producer and host for the World Choral Spectacular I, distributed in 2003. He holds degrees in voice and English literature, has been a soloist with the Dale Warland Singers and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and an Artist-in-Residence at the Oregon Bach Festival. He won the Peabody, broadcasting's equivalent to the Pulitzer, in 2000 for writing the seven-part music documentary The Mississippi: River of Song. Simon and Schuster published his memoir, A Crossing, in 1998. He is also the producer-host of American Public Media's Minnesota Orchestra broadcasts, heard on over 130 stations nationwide.