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Press Releases

After 57 Seasons, New Amsterdam Singers Founder and Music Director Clara Longstreth to Retire

January 31, 2025 | By New Amsterdam Singers
Manager

For immediate release:

After 57 Seasons, New Amsterdam Singers Founder and Music Director Clara Longstreth to Retire

New Amsterdam Singers announces the retirement of Music Director Clara Longstreth — who founded the chorus in 1968 and has led the group for 57 seasons — at the end of the current concert season. Ben Arendsen will succeed Longstreth, effective with the 2025-2026 season, becoming only the second conductor to hold that post in the history of the chorus.

During her nearly six decades as music director, Longstreth has commissioned 16 new choral works, presented another 92 world, American, and New York premieres, led the chorus in 17 overseas tours, developed a reputation for innovative programming, and established New Amsterdam Singers as one of the preeminent avocational choruses in New York City.

As former New York Times chief classical music critic Anthony Tommasini wrote, “This impressive ensemble has won a loyal following for inventive programs, devised by Clara Longstreth, the group’s longtime conductor, that combine new and old music and unusual works in fresh ways.”

Arendsen is an Associate Professor and Director of Choral Activities at Nassau Community College and has served as music director of the Great Neck Choral Society, the Forest Hills Choir, and the Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company of Long Island. He has degrees in music education and conducting from the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, City University of New York, where he studied with Maurice Peress.

Upon Longstreth’s retirement at the end of 2024-2025 season, Arendsen will be taking the helm of a chorus long known for the breadth of its repertoire and its championing of new works. Specializing in a cappella and double-chorus pieces, the chorus sings music ranging from the 16th to 21st centuries.

“I have tried to balance New Amsterdam Singers’ repertoire between the beloved and familiar and the brand new,” Longstreth said. “I wanted the chorus to sing music that was challenging but manageable, stretching the idea of what is beautiful with a variety of musical styles and texts. It has been especially rewarding to work with composers we have commissioned.”

The composers New Amsterdam Singers has commissioned include Dale Trumbore, Paul Alan Levi, Ronald Perera, Ben Moore, Robert Paterson, and Lisa Bielawa. In March 2024, Longstreth led the chorus, soloists, and members of The Harlem Chamber Players in the world premiere of Michael Dellaira’s chamber opera Arctic Explorations, a joint commission with Nancy Manocherian’s the cell theatre. This coming March, Longstreth will conduct the world premiere of the chorus’s most recent commission, Philip Lasser’s La Signification des Lettres

In addition to commissions, Longstreth has introduced New York audiences to emerging composers and seldom-heard works, having presented premieres by Matthew Harris, Abbie Betinis, Steven Stucky, Steven Sametz, Mark Kilstofte, and Adolphus Hailstork, among many others. In 2016 New Amsterdam Singers performed Frank Martin’s oratorio Golgotha with orchestra and soloists as guests of Trinity Church Wall Street, the first time the work had been heard in New York City in more than 60 years. In 2000 Longstreth guest conducted singers from the chorus and the Mannes College Orchestra in a semi-staged performance of the folk opera Down in the Valley at Wall-to-Wall Kurt Weill at Symphony Space.

Under Longstreth’s leadership, New Amsterdam Singers released two commercial CDs of American choral music, including American Journey, which Elliott Hurwitt of Fanfare Magazine called one of his top five CDs of 1991.

“I am thrilled and honored to have been selected to lead New Amsterdam Singers and am deeply humbled to be following in such illustrious footsteps as Clara’s,” Arendsen said. “It’s an incredible and inspiring legacy to inherit, and I am energized to be given this opportunity to continue New Amsterdam Singers' work in the choral community." 

On hearing the news of Arendsen’s selection, Longstreth said, “Bravo! I think Ben is a great fit for New Amsterdam Singers and its skilled, dedicated singers. I am enormously grateful for the thorough process that led to Ben’s selection, and I am very pleased with the outcome.”

For further information, contact New Amsterdam Singers manager Stefanie Izzo at manager@nasingers.org.

Full list of commissions and premieres available at nasingers.org/music/

 

Additional biographical information:

Clara Longstreth studied conducting with G. Wallace Woodworth (Harvard), Richard Westenburg (Juilliard), Amy Kaiser and Semyon Bychkov (Mannes College of Music), and Helmuth Rilling (Oregon Bach Festival). She has been a frequent adjudicator at choral conferences and was selected to present a lecture-demonstration on “Adventures in Programming” at the Eastern Division Convention of the American Choral Directors Association. Longstreth has served on the faculty of Rutgers University and as a guest conductor of the Limón Dance Company, the Mannes College Orchestra, and the popular Messiah Sing-In performances at Avery Fisher Hall. Longstreth received her B.A. from Radcliffe College of Harvard University and her M.A. from The Juilliard School.

 

Ben Arendsen is an active conductor of choral and orchestral music throughout the New York and Long Island area. Arendsen is the Director of Choral Activities at Nassau Community College, where he additionally teaches music history, ear training, and guitar. He currently serves as Music Director of the Forest Hills Choir in Queens, N.Y. and previously served as Music Director of the Great Neck Choral Society, a post he held from 2019-2024. Past appointments include conductor and singer with C4: The Choral Composer Conductor Collective, Associate Conductor of the Oratorio Society of Queens, Music Director with the Metropolitan Youth Orchestras (Nassau Symphony Orchestra), interim Music Director of the Sound Symphony, and Music Director of the Gilbert and Sullivan Light Opera Company of Long Island. When not conducting, Arendsen sings with eVoco Voice Collective, a Long Island-based choir dedicated to choral excellence. Arendsen holds a master’s degree in orchestral conducting from Queens College’s Aaron Copland School of Music, where he studied with Maurice Peress. As a guitarist, he has performed throughout New York and New England, including the Carnegie Hall premiere of Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint with William Anderson in 2006.

 

 

 

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