Auditions
Audition Dates
Auditions for The Phoenix Symphony Chorus will be held in August of 2010.
Audition Requirements
Men and women over the age of 17 with familiarity with musical notation are invited to audition. Candidates will be asked to perform a prepared solo piece.
Contact
For more information or to set up an audition, please email tpsc06@gmail.com.
TPS Chorus Member Handbook and Roster
Download a copy of the Member Handbook (PDF).
About the Chorus
The Phoenix Symphony Chorus is led by Dr. Gregory Gentry and Assistant Director Jana Minov. Founded in 2001, the Chorus serves as a professional-level performing partner for Arizona's only full-time orchestra. The Chorus is comprised of over 100 volunteers and is governed by its own members in partnership with the Chorusmaster and Symphony staff. Chorus members collectively donate more than 12,000 hours of service to music and the Symphony each year.
Rehearsals are held on Monday nights (7:00 - 9:30 p.m.) at Central United Methodist Church (1875 N Central Ave in Phoenix).
About the Staff
Gregory R. Gentry returns for his fifth season (2010/11) as Chorus Master of The Phoenix Symphony.
Under Dr. Gentry’s leadership, the Phoenix Symphony Chorus has grown in size and successfully taken on extraordinarily challenging new repertoire, including Grey’s Enemy Slayer: A Navajo Oratorio, Golijov’s Ainadamar, and Adam’s Nixon in China. The February 2008 world premiere of Enemy Slayer: A Navajo Oratorio was followed by the Phoenix Symphony Chorus reprising their work with the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra in July 2008, punctuated by the March 2009 Naxos commercial recording release of the work. In versatile contrast, select members of the Phoenix Symphony Chorus performed to sold-out audiences for the May 2009 concert A Salute to Rodgers & Hammerstein.
February 2009 marked Dr. Gentry’s Phoenix Symphony conducting debut, with Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms. He appeared at Carnegie Hall for the third time in 2010 to conduct Mozart’s Coronation Mass in 2010, and will return again to Avery Fisher Hall in 2011. His conducting technique has been guided by studies with Eph Ehly and George Lynn, as well as additional work with Brian Priestman, Dale Warland, and Gary Hill. Both a singer and percussionist, Dr. Gentry has performed under the baton of Dave Brubeck, Aaron Copland, Karel Husa, Jorge Mester and Robert Shaw.
Dr. Gentry has worked in many facets of choral research and conducting. His edition of "Dnes Hhristos" (Musica Russica, 2009), Vasilii Titov's Seventeenth-Century Moscow Baroque Liturgical Choral Concerto for 12 voices—premiered in Russian by the Oregon Repertory Singers in 2001—is the first-ever published Western edition of this work. His edition of Jean Philippe Rameau's "Cor meum et caro mea" from Quam dilecta tabernacula premiered in February 2005 at the American Choral Directors Association national convention in Los Angeles.
Among many professional organizations, Dr. Gentry is an active member of the American Choral Directors Association, Chorus America, the National Association for Music Education, and the National Collegiate Choral Organization. He is President-Elect of the Arizona Choral Directors Association, and the founding director of Southwestern Liederkranz,
Dr. Gentry is the newly appointed Director of Choral Performance at the Arizona State University School of Music, with the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. In this capacity, at ASU, he conducts the Symphonic Chorale, teaches graduate and undergraduate conducting and literature, and administers the doctoral, masters and undergraduate choral conducting program (which includes over 300 students engaged in choral music). Fall 2009 will mark the return of the ASU choral program’s collaboration with the Phoenix Symphony and Chorus, with John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls.
Dr. Gentry earned his doctorate from the Conservatory of Music at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Jana Minov is delighted to join The Phoenix Symphony in the 2010/11 as the Assistant Chorus Master. Born into a family of professional musicians, she brings vast experience with both orchestral and choral music. A native of Belgrade, Serbia, Minov has conducted performances, both here and abroad, including venues in Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, Macedonia and China. Of her academic endeavors, she was honored with a special award at the International Choir Competition in Shanghai, China in July 2004.
At the age of 23, Minov conducted Mozart’s Magic Flute, in the National Opera House in Belgrade, where she also served as the assistant conductor for four years. As the Artistic Director and one of the founders of Riznica, a chamber choir based in Phoenix, she strives to preserve the rich heritage of Balkan and Slavic music. Recently, Minov conducted Handel’s Julius Caesar and Puccini’s Suor Angelica with Arizona State University’s Lyric Opera Theatre as well as two world premiers with the ASU Chamber Orchestra.
Ms. Minov holds the degree Master of Music in Conducting from the University of Belgrade and is currently pursing her Doctor of Musical Arts at ASU.