The Choral Art Society of New Jersey, approaching our 48th season, is a not-for-profit community chorus is dedicated to the study and performance of great choral works. The chorus has earned accolades of the public and critics since its beginnings, when Evelyn Bleeke founded and directed the group until her retirement in 1995.

James S. Little, seated front and center will be our Music Director for the past nine years.

The CAS performs two concerts each year, accompanied by the Choral Art Society Orchestra and professional soloists. We rehearse in each Tuesday, September through May, from 8:00 to 10:00 PM in choir room at The Presbyterian Church in Westfield, 140 Mountain Avenue at Broad Street in Westfield, New Jersey.

Westfield TV36, Comcast, and Cablevision Local Programming broadcast our concerts, as we constantly perform to sustain the knowledge and admiration of classical choral music.

Our annual Handel's "Messiah" sing is held on the first Friday of each December at the First United Methodist Church, One East Broad Street, Westfield, NJ.  Singers and non-singers alike are welcome at this festive community event to help ring in the Holidays.

Next Performance                                                                             January 23, 2010          James Knowles Paine's         Mass in D                                       An 1867 American Composition, scored for soprano, contralto             tenor, and bass soloists, mixed chorus, performed with two              each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets                       three trombone, timpani, strings, and organ.          Paine's Mass has strong German influences, with syncopations     shifting accents, and scale figures followed by repeated chords in the      Gloria indicate familiarity with Beethoven the trumpet and the melodic   outlines of the “Et resurrexit” remind one of Bach's Bminor Mass, and its subsequent repeated chords slashed out by the strings recall Handel (1)        8:00 PM at The Presbyterian Church in Westfield                 140 Mountain Avenue, corner of East Broad Street in Westfield, New Jersey                                 For directions see: http://www.westfieldpc.org/                                   (1) Source:  John Knowles Paine: Mass in D, by Peter Eliot Stone

Funding has been made possible in part by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Department of State, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, through a grant administered by the Union County Division of Cultural and Heritage Affairs.

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