Chorale director sings on choral Grammy winner

Stephen Spinelli, director of the Cornell Chorale and Chamber Singers, sang on Gavin Bryar’s “The Fifth Century,” which won the 2018 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance Jan. 28.

Spinelli was a regular member of The Crossing, a Philadelphia-based chamber choir, from 2010-15 before coming to Cornell. The group recorded the large-scale work for choir and saxophone quartet, which takes its text from the English poet and theologian Thomas Traherne’s Centuries of Meditations.”

This is not Spinelli’s first time singing with a Grammy-winning ensemble: He performed with Roomful of Teeth, winner of the 2013 Grammy for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance (pictured), earlier in January 2018.

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