The Slava Chorale
Dr. G. Fredrick Guzasky, Director
G. Fredrick Guzasky (Grigory F. Gusevsky), concert organist and composer, had been a professor at Bridgewater State University, Affiliated Artist at MIT in Cambridge, and Director of Music and Liturgy a The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Illinois. As a recitalist, he has performed in New England and the Midwest, as well as Russia, Latvia, and England, receiving the Boston University Outstanding Performance Award and the EMACT Award in conducting. Highlights of more recent seasons include tours of Russia and Latvia, with engagements at the Cathedral of Riga, the Kapella Concert Hall in St. Petersburg, Russia, as well as teaching master classes at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Other venues have included performances at St. Paul’s Cathedral, Holy Trinity Church in New York, the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, Boston’s Old North Church, and King’s Chapel.
As a composer, he has to his credit several Masses, numerous choral anthems, including a series based on Russian Orthodox texts, and a number of instrumental works. Dr. Guzasky is also author of The Gregorian Chant Handbook, a mystery novel, Gradus Ad Parnassum for the Organist, and the children's story Sasha and the Russian Royal Family. Guzasky's recordings include Comes Autumn Time, G. Fredrick Guzasky – LIVE, and Isn’t It Romantic
He has taught at Millikin University, Eastern Illinois University, Boston University, the Clinton Fine Arts Center, and had served for several years as the director of The Boston Conservatory Satellite School in Cohasset, that has developed into The Music Academy - Conservatory Teaching in Your Community, where he maintains a studio of organ, piano, harpsichord, and cello students. At his current schools, he teaches piano, music theory, music history, Russian studies, and keyboard fundamentals.
Visit http://www.fredrick-guzasky.com/
Marilyn Markovich Shesko, alto
Marilyn Markovich Shesko has been the choir director at The Nativity of the Virgin Mary Orthodox Church in Chelsea, Massachusetts since 1975. She began singing with the choir in her Russian Orthodox parish at age four. As a Harvard undergraduate she sang with the Byzantine-Russian Liturgical Choir and served for a year as choir director and organist at the Greek Orthodox parish of St. John the Baptist in Boston . Her honors thesis was a linguistic analysis of Old Church Slavonic. Now retired from the world of information technology, she sings with the Maine-based Rachmaninoff Choir in addition to the Slava Chorale. Ms. Shesko is a specialist in Orthodox music and tradition as well as the interpretation of Slavonic music, and has created chant arrangements for hundreds of hymns for liturgical use.
Heather Gallagher, mezzo-soprano
Heather Gallagher, based in Boston,
Carol Cybulska, soprano
Carol Cybulska received her vocal training at the Music Conservatory in Cologne, Germany, and the Schola Cantorum in Basle, Switzerland . She has performed throughout Europe, Australia and the U.S. as a concert and recording artist, both as a soloist and as a member of numerous early music ensembles, including Sequentia and the Huelgas Ensemble and more recently with The Blue Heron Renaissance Choir. She is a founding member of the Aujourd'hui Ensemble, which performs a wide variety of chamber music. Carol is co-director of the Orpheus Vocal Performance Laboratory summer workshops for young singers on the South Shore . She also teaches voice in her private voice studio in Kingston and in the Pembroke High School after-school music program.
Donna Ames, alto
Donna Ames has been a frequent guest artist with the Arizona Opera, Portland Opera Repertory Theater, Opera Festival of New Jersey, Marin Opera, and Chautauqua Opera, her performances meeting with critical acclaim. She has also had the pleasure of premiering many original works at the Chautauqua Opera and New York University Summer Opera Theater, and can be heard on the Dido and Aneas recording by the Boston Baroque.
Since turning her attentions to teaching, Miss Ames has taught talented voice students through the Rivers Music School where she is the Voice Faculty Chair. She has taught at University of Massachusetts at Lowel and Bridgewater State University, where she founded the Bridgewater Opera Ensemble.
Mark Anderson, bass
Mark Anderson has appeared in productions with Boston Lyric Opera, Arizona Opera, San Diego Opera, Opera Theater of Saint Louis, and Portland Opera Repertory Theater. Mr. Anderson has been honored by the Metropolitan National Council Auditions and the San Francisco Opera Auditions with first place and encouragement awards and has been a recipient of the Igor Gorin Memorial Fund Award. Mr Anderson includes in his oratorio repertoire Verdi's Requiem, Mozart's Requiem, Haydn's Mass in Time of War, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Handel's Messiah, Bach's St. Matthew Passion, Brahms' Requiem and the role of Elijah. Mr. Anderson was a longtime section leader and soloist at the Second Church of Newton and is currently the bass section leader at the Church of St. John the Evangelist in Hingham.
Daniel Rosensweig, tenor
Daniel Rosensweig began his musical study with piano lessons in 1992. He studied piano classically for most of the time through college, mixing in 3 years of jazz piano, and most recently a year of organ study with Edwin Lawrence. Daniel has been singing for all his life, joining his first formal choir in 1994, and has sung with 3-4 choirs concurrently since 2000. He has acted in 20 musical theater productions, and several operas. He began studying voice privately in 2001, currently studying voice under Luellen Best, and vocal pedagogy under Emily Romney. Daniel earned a BA in music from Williams College in 2004, where he studied music theory, voice, piano, composition, choral conducting, vocal arranging, recording and editing, and directed the Williams College Elizabethans. He sings currently with the Slava Chorale, the Choir of Men and Boys at All-Saints Ashmont, and the Cantata Singers, and teaches music composition at 2 schools through the Classroom Cantatas program. Daniel teaches at Red Oak after school when he's not making music. In his free time, Daniel can frequently be found contradancing in and around Boston.
Jeffrey Barth, baritone
Jeffrey Barth is a performer that holds a keen interest in performing the odd and unusual, especially in contemporary works. Recently, Mr. Barth has performed in new music recitals at the Boston Conservatory, and has also performed in master classes at the Longy School of Music under singers such as Wolfgang Brendel. Mr. Barth is also very excited to be in the process of preparing an upcoming recital of Robert Schumann’s “Liederkreis” Op. 24 and Jacque Ibert’s “Chansons de Don Quichotte”, amongst other pieces. A native of Indianapolis,
