Yale Voices Vocal Ensmeble

Karolina Wojteczko, direction

Julian Revie, organ

Works by J. S. Bach, H. von Bingen, C. Monteverdi, B. Britten, C. Franck, M. Duruflé, T. L. de Victoria, Pérotin, as well as some arrangements of Polish Christmas Carols

Ms. Wojteczko is the recipient of numerous scholarships and awards including the James Somer Opera Scholarship, Schoolmasters Special Scholarship, the Metropolitan Opera National Council La Camera Guida Award (New England Region), first place winner at the James Furman Competition, Opera Moderna Scholarship, International Opera Performing Experience Scholarship, and has been a finalist of the Heida Hermann International Competition and the Mirabell Competition in Salzburg, Austria.

As a soloist, Karolina has performed in North America and Europe in venues including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and Thomaskirche, Leipzig. A Connecticut local, Karolina Wojteczko has been singing in New Haven area churches since shortly after immigrating to the US at age 12 from the small village of Bagny, Poland. She is a Music Director at the Saint Thomas More Catholic Chapel at Yale University. She holds Bachelors in Music in Vocal Performance from Western Connecticut State University and Masters in Music from the Yale School of Music and the Institute of Sacred Music at Yale. Karolina has studied vocal performance with Margaret Astrup, Beth Roberts, Bernarda Fink and James Taylor.

An award-winning mezzo-soprano, Karolina’s repertoire spans from early to contemporary music. As an immigrant, she has been devoting her time to touring and singing at benefit concerts for refugees. A dedicated educator and mom, she also enjoys performing with ensembles like Yale Schola Cantorum, Yale Consort, and Connecticut’s Polish folklore group, Polanie.

Australian-Canadian composer Julian Darius Revie is Composer in Residence at the Center for Music and Liturgy, Saint Thomas More Chapel at Yale University. Prior posts include serving as Organist at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Ottawa and Director of the Choir of Robinson College at Cambridge University.  

Mr. Revie is honoured to be the first prize winner of the 2016 Francesco Siciliani composition competition run by the Vatican, with an international jury panel chaired by Helmuth Rilling and Arvo Pärt. The jury convened on September 16, 2016 for a public performance of the finalists’ works by the St. Jacob’s Chamber Choir of Stockholm, conducted by Gary Graden.  

Mr. Revie’s compositions for solo instruments, voice, chamber ensembles and orchestra have been performed in North America, Europe, and Australia, in venues including Lincoln Center and the Sydney Opera House. In June 2015, the world premiere of his Mass of the Divine Shepherd was given at Carnegie Hall in New York City. The hour-long work featured soloists mezzo-soprano Karolina Wojteczko and tenor Russell Thomas joined by 600 performers – choirs from Norway, Finland, England and North America, including the National Children's Chorus (USA), and over 200 handbell players, including Iceland’s Reykjanesbær Music School Bell Choir, all overseen by conductor Stephen Layton.  

Also in 2015, The Love of God, a work adapted from the seventh movement of Mass of the Divine Shepherd, was selected as the communion antiphon for the Papal Mass in Philadelphia. It was performed by The Philadelphia Orchestra with a 300-voice massed choir and children’s chorus, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin.  

Born in Ottawa, Canada, Mr. Revie studied piano, organ and clarinet from an early age and was first prize winner of the Canadian Music Competition in organ performance. He holds degrees in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics from Yale University and Caltech in the United States and a Master’s in Composition from Cambridge University in Great Britain. His master’s dissertation, “Unity and Uniqueness in the Fifth Mode Great Responsories: New Approaches to the Multifaceted Layers of Plainchant Melody,” is an analysis of groups of related plainchant melodies that draws upon techniques used in analysis of tonal music (specifically, Schenkerian analysis) as well as upon the mathematical and computational tools used in comparative genetic analysis. Mr. Revie has studied piano with Sandra Webster and organ with Pamela Hoswitschka in Ottawa, and later with Canadian composer Veronika Krausas (USC) and Bruce Reich (UCLA). At The Juilliard School, he has studied with Milton Babbitt, Samuel Adler, and most recently Philip Lasser. He is a recipient of a DAAD scholarship for study in Berlin.