A lot of us high school kids profited by our teachers being in the Cleveland Orchestra chorus under him!

The English Cathedral choirs do this better. Better yet are the really fine German choirs. It IS German music for the German aesthesis. This is a unique tonal aesthetic which few non-Germans can adequately assimilate (though I know of a Japanese group, the Bach Collegium Japan, who are virtually indistinguishable from a good German choir. The only possible 'give away' might be that they do it too well).

And: is the light show of ugly colours and gyrating squiggles meant to have some relation to the music?? If so, what?! What are they there for? Must we have them?
I have even heard that they are now de riguer at Houston Symphony concerts at Jones Hall. Hence, I no longe attend.

There are many people in Atlanta who can speak of him better than I. I had the good fortune of doing some score study with him in the 80's as a result of my undergraduate choral teacher's association with him. He was working on the Britten War Requiem at the time.

It should be noted that Shaw's sound ideas changed a good bit in his later years. Certainly, he loved the big groups and it is my personal thinking that he loved the Brahm's Requiem the most. But I heard the last performance of the B minor Mass that was done with 60 people in chorus. It was such a different experience from the earlier recording. A more translucent sound and VERY straight soprano singing. When he came out on stage for it, he noted "Some of you this will be the first time you will hear this. And for some of you, it will be the last time." He died some days after that performance.

I personally never loved that he was treated as god in Atlanta, because I felt that his approach to Baroque music was not in keeping with what we knew about performance practice. But time has yielded an appreciation of him balanced with the problems of his interpretations. And we have grown a great deal from him here.

On a personal note, he was an incredible choral conductor who encouraged the art in the region. Could also throw his baton with frightening accuracy at someone. Some argue that after his wife died, he became a softer person. I do not know, but I know the sound he asked for choirs in the 80's and the sound in the 90's was very different. We all change and grow.

His presence is still felt sometimes in Atlanta,even now. And his disciples are prevalent.

Just some personal memories of the great musician he was.

While an undergraduate at UW-Madison about 50 years ago, Robert Shaw conducted a combined chorus festival program that featured the Stravinsky Symphony of Psalms and the Brahms German Requiem. I would have loved to play oboe or English horn in the Stravinsky, but there was such a plethora of excellent double reed players that I was recruited to play fifth flute and piccolo instead. Then I sang bass in the Brahms. It was the experience of a lifetime.

Robert Shaw's Telarc CD version, with Atlanta forces, of Hindemith's When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom'd remains wonderful. It's not the most lucid piece of engineering you'll ever hear - choral diction is less precise than on other Shaw recordings - but it's a fitting memorial to both conductor and composer. Shaw knew this music better than any other performer in the world.

I, too, am principally and early music type and recognize the great difference between performing, say, the German Requiem with a chorus numbering in the hundreds (under Shaw in Madison), the Monteverdi Vespers of 1610 with a chorus of 18 (in the first performance of the Kurzmann edition with Zephyrus), and even the Browne O Maria salvatoris Mater with only 16 singers (two to a part). There is a clarity of sound that comes from individual voices in the different parts with the smaller forces that is impossible to have with the blended sound of dozens of singers on each part in huge-scale performances.

"solo with friends"...I like that phrase. A bit reminiscent of "friends with benefits" (ugh)