The UMS Choral Union invites you to take part in its 24th season of Summer Sings. Just come as you are to these no-audition, no-performance evenings of memorable music-making.

As many as 250 singers from southeastern Michigan, northern Ohio, and Canada have joined each session in singing through great choral repertoire with some of the nation’s most respected choral conductors and outstanding soloists. We rehearse portions of the score during the first half, break for refreshments, and then re-convene to sing through the entire work.

Note: if you are bringing your own score, we recommend the Bärenreiter edition. If you do not have a score, one will be provided to you for the evening as part of your registration fee.

About the conductor

GRAMMY® Award winning conductor Jerry Blackstone recently retired as director of Choirs and chair of the Department of Conducting at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance where he conducted the Chamber Choir, taught conducting at the graduate level, and administered a choral program of 11 choirs. In February 2006, he received two GRAMMY® Awards (“Best Choral Performance” and “Best Classical Album”) as chorusmaster for the critically acclaimed Naxos recording of William Bolcom’s monumental Songs of Innocence and of Experience. The recent Naxos recording of Milhaud’s L’Orestie d’Eschyle, on which Blackstone served as chorusmaster, was nominated for a 2015 GRAMMY® Award (“Best Opera Recording”). For significant contributions to choral music in the state of Michigan, he received the 2006 Maynard Klein Lifetime Achievement Award from the ACDA-Michigan chapter.

From 2003-15, Blackstone served as conductor and music director of the University Musical Society (UMS) Choral Union, a large community/university chorus that frequently appears with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) and the Ann Arbor Symphony and presents yearly performances of Handel’s Messiah and other major works for chorus and orchestra. Choirs prepared by Blackstone have appeared under the batons of Valery Gergiev, Neeme Järvi, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Leonard Slatkin, Hans Graf, Michael Tilson Thomas, John Adams, Helmuth Rilling, James Conlon, Nicholas McGegan, Peter Oundjian, and Yitzak Perlman.

Blackstone is considered one of the country’s leading conducting teachers, and his students have been first place award winners and finalists in both the graduate and undergraduate divisions of ACDA’s biennial National Choral Conducting Awards competition.

Prior to coming to the U-M in 1988, Professor Blackstone served on the music faculties of Phillips University in Oklahoma, Westmont College in California, and Huntington University in Indiana. He holds degrees from the University of Southern California, Indiana University, and Wheaton College.