Over its long existence, the Westminster Choir has developed into one of America’s foremost musical institutions. John Finley Williamson established the ensemble in 1920 at the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Dayton, Ohio. Already by 1929 he had transformed its initially untrained singers into a polished professional group recognized across the nation and abroad; that same year the choir formed an affiliation with Ithaca College in New York. In 1932 it relocated to Princeton, New Jersey, gaining convenient proximity to the orchestras of both New York and Philadelphia, and the city has remained its base ever since. Westminster Choir College, now an academic division of Rider University in Princeton, originated directly from the choir’s expanding activities. Eight distinct choral ensembles currently constitute the college’s performing resources: the Westminster Chapel Choir, which draws on the freshman class; the Westminster Schola Cantorum, composed of sophomores; the 200-voice Westminster Symphony Choir; the more select 40-voice Westminster Choir; the chamber-sized Westminster Kantorei; a Bell Choir; the Jubilee Singers; and the outreach ensemble known as the Westminster Williamson Voices. The Symphony Choir and the Westminster Choir serve as the college’s primary public representatives through tours and recordings.
These two flagship ensembles have compiled an extraordinary record of accomplishments. The Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski became the first major orchestra to feature the Westminster Choir, in 1934. Since then its partnerships have encompassed virtually every leading conductor of the era, among them Bruno Walter and Claudio Abbado, Arturo Toscanini and Pierre Boulez, Sergey Rachmaninov and Gustavo Dudamel. The choir has appeared more than 300 times with the New York Philharmonic alone. It has toured extensively throughout the world and has recorded for twelve different labels. From the founding of the Spoleto Festival U.S.A. in 1977, the Westminster Choir has served as its resident chorus; it has likewise held that role for the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy. Between 1971 and 2004, under artistic director Joseph Flummerfelt, the choir earned its first Grammy nomination in 1976 for a recording of Sergey Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky. Another national recognition occurred in 2002, when the ensemble was invited to perform Verdi’s Messa da Requiem for a televised commemoration of the September 11th events. After Flummerfelt’s retirement, Joe Miller assumed leadership; his recordings with the choir, among them The Heart’s Reflection: Music of Daniel Elder (2013), earned consistently favorable critical response.
