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08/23/2017 09:30 AMBarry Asch can now keep his formal dress tailcoat in the closet. He won’t be needing it anymore. Asch wore tails when he conducted the Cappella Cantorum chorus, but after 47 years, Asch, a co-founder and music director of Cappella Cantorum, has just announced his retirement.
“I’m 82 years old and it’s getting to be too much,” he said, explaining it was not just rehearsals and concerts that were difficult. “It was all the organization.”
According to Asch, organization involved everything from getting the music to doing publicity for upcoming concerts.
Simon Holt, the artistic director of the Salt Mash Opera and director of music at the First Congregational Church in Old Lyme, will take over from Asch. Holt and Asch worked together last year at Cappella Cantorum’s annual concert of Handel’s Messiah, with Asch conducting the first half and Holt the second half.
Instead of conducting, Asch, a tenor, will remain with Cappella Cantorum as a member of the chorus.
“It’s doing the other side,” he said.
Since its founding 47 years ago, Cappella Cantorum’s concerts have presented a wide spectrum of choral works from the classics of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms to 20th-century composers like John Rutter and Carl Orff.
When Asch and the late Phillip Zimmerman founded the chorus in 1970, the goal was twofold: to present major choral music and to do it with a group of volunteers, regardless of their musical skills or technical knowledge of singing. For that reason, Cappella Cantorum has always remained a non-auditioned chorus, for which the only requirement is to show up with the desire to sing. Singers from some 20 communities in Connecticut have been part of Cappella Cantorum.
Jane Allen, a current member of the chorus expressed appreciation for his welcoming philosophy.
“I am so grateful to [Asch] for the opportunity he has provided to singers with limited vocal skills such as myself to participate in the presentation of beautiful master works,” she wrote.
Asch founded Cappella Cantorum after conducting church choirs in Westbrook and Essex in major choral pieces. He wanted to perform the music with a larger complement of voices. In 1977, he added the Cappella Cantorum Men’s Chorus and in 1987 started Summer Sings, a series of informal sessions open to all, jointly sponsored by Cappella Cantorum and Con Brio, where participants sing through different vocal compositions every week. Con Brio, founded by members of Cappella Cantorum, is a local auditioned chorus that performs regularly in the area.
Asch grew up in West Hartford and graduated from the Hartt School, now the performing arts conservatory of the University of Hartford. His experience as a choral director started when he was in the army stationed in Alaska. He led a church choir on the base and staged joint concerts with a church in Fairbanks. After teaching two years in Oregon, Asch returned to Connecticut, taking a position as a music instructor in Regional District 4 schoola.
For most of his career, he led choral programs at Valley Regional High School, but also taught at John Winthrop Middle School and for a time gave instrumental lessons in elementary schools in Deep River, Essex, and Chester. He retired after 31 years of teaching. He’s also now retired as choir director of the First Congregational Church in Essex, a position he held for 45 years.
As he looked back over his four decades at Cappella Cantorum, Asch said highlights include five performances the chorus gave at Carnegie Hall some 30 years ago and the tours, which started in l981. The chorus has visited more than a dozen countries spanning the breadth of the European continent from Great Britain to Austria.
“Doing this for 47 years is an awesome achievement,” said Ed Bosse, now the president of Cappella Cantorum. “It’s hard to fathom how he got it all done, and he will be greatly missed.”
Asch and his wife Wilma, who served as executive director of Cappella Cantorum for 16 years, are not going anywhere. They plan to stay in their longtime home in Old Saybrook. As for the tailcoat that can now go into storage? Barry says over the years he has had to buy several.
“It’s amazing how the coat shrinks while hanging in the closet,” he says.
For more information on Cappella Cantorum, visit www.cappellacantorum.org. Non-auditioned registration-rehearsal is on Mondays, Sept. 11 and 18, at 7 p.m. at John Winthrop Middle School, 1 Winthrop Road, Deep River; use the rear entrance.