Phoenix Chorale Wins 'Best Chorale Performance' at 2016 GRAMMY Awards

The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences has awarded the Phoenix Chorale and the Kansas City Chorale a GRAMMY Award at the 58th Annual GRAMMY Award Ceremony held February 15, 2016, in Los Angeles. The Chorales' joint recording of Rachmaninoff: All-night Vigil was recognized with top honor for "Best Choral Performance."

Artistic Director Charles Bruffy accepted the award. Including this win, the Phoenix Chorale recordings have now earned a combined total of twelve GRAMMY nominations and three GRAMMY wins.

Audio tracks from the award-winning album can be found here. Video of Phoenix Chorale in concert with Charles Bruffy conducting can be found can be found here.

Rachmaninoff: All-night Vigil was recorded under the direction of Artistic Director Charles Bruffy at St. Peter's Cathedral in Kansas City, Kansas with fifty-six singers from the Phoenix Chorale and the Kansas City Chorale.
The recording was released by Chandos Records on the 100th anniversary of the world premiere of Rachmaninoff's All-night Vigil, which was performed by the Moscow Synodal Choir on March 10, 1915.
The combined ensembles held live performances of the work in April and May 2014 in both Phoenix and in Kansas City.

Upon accepting the GRAMMY award for the recording, Bruffy stated, "I could not be more thrilled, and am so proud of these amazing singers who have so willingly gone on this journey with me, and of the overwhelming international reception this album has received."

Jen Rogers, Phoenix Chorale's Interim President and CEO stated, "I would especially like to thank the Phoenix community, including the many donors, patrons and volunteers for their support, without which today would simply not have happened."

With these two GRAMMY wins, Rachmaninoff: All-night Vigil has reached unprecedented achievements for a Classical album including:

* 5 weeks on Billboard Charts
* First Play on iTunes
* #1 debut on Billboard Traditional Classical Chart
* #3 debut on Billboard Classical Chart (Includes crossover albums)
* iTunes Editor's Choice
* #1 on three Amazon sales charts, including Opera/Vocal, Chamber, & Classical
* iTunes Main Room Feature for 4 days
* Featured on American Public Media's Performance Today
* Premiere broadcast of the entire album on Classical Minnesota Public Radio's Choral Stream

Rachmaninoff: All-night Vigil is distributed by Naxos of America, the #1 independent classical music distributor in the U.S. and Canada, specializing in state-of-the-art distribution, marketing and promotion.

Rachmaninoff's All-night Vigil is available for purchase on iTunes and Amazon.

About Charles Bruffy: One of the most admired choral conductors in the United States, GRAMMY Award winning conductor Charles Bruffy began his career as a tenor soloist, performing with the Robert Shaw Festival Singers. Robert Shaw encouraged his development as a conductor and in 1996 he was invited by National Public Radio to help celebrate Shaw's eightieth birthday with an on-air tribute. In 1999, The New York Times named him as the late, great conductor's potential heir. He has been Artistic Director of the Kansas City Chorale since 1988, of the Phoenix Chorale since 1999, and of the Kansas City Symphony Chorus since 2008.

In 2009, he brought the Phoenix Chorale and Kansas City Chorale to Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center for their New York debut, The New York Times praising the choirs' "refined sound and elegant phrasing...vivid intensity...[and] buoyant pulse and energetic finesse." He conducts workshops and clinics across the US and abroad, serves on a number of advisory boards, and served on the Chorus America Board for seven years.

Respected and renowned for his fresh and passionate interpretations of standards of the choral repertoire and for championing new music, he has commissioned and premiered works by composers such as Ola Gjeilo, Matthew Harris, Libby Larsen, Zhou Long, Stephen Paulus, Stephen Sametz, Steven Stucky, Eric Whitacre, and Chen Yi. Under his supervision, the Roger Dean Company, a division of the Lorenz Corporation, publishes a choral series specializing in music for professional ensembles and sophisticated high school and college choirs.

His eclectic discography includes eight recordings for Chandos Records. Five of these recordings have received a total of twelve GRAMMY nominations and five GRAMMY wins. These include 2008 GRAMMY for "Best Engineered Album, Classical" for Grechaninov: Passion Week featuring the Phoenix Chorale and Kansas City Chorale; the 2009 GRAMMY for "Best Small Ensemble Performance" for Spotless Rose: Hymns to the Virgin Mary featuring the Phoenix Chorale; and GRAMMYs in 2012 for "Best Engineered Album, Classical," and "Best Choral Performance" and 2015 for Rachmaninoff: All-night Vigil, for "Best Choral Performance."

The GRAMMY-winning Phoenix Chorale, under the direction of Artistic Director Charles Bruffy, is regarded as one of the finest choral ensembles in North America. What began in 1958 as a small study group of singers became a fully professional choir in 1992 made up of Arizona residents: highly educated and trained singers, teachers and professionals. In 2004, the Phoenix Chorale became the first North American choir to record for the U.K.'s prestigious Chandos Records and, since then, the Chorale's recordings have earned a total of twelve GRAMMY nominations and three GRAMMY wins. www.phoenixchorale.org

Founded in 1981, the Kansas City Chorale is a professional vocal ensemble that enriches local, national, and international communities through its dedication to excellence in performing music from diverse historical periods. The Chorale has received an ASCAP Award for adventurous programming in addition to receiving multiple GRAMMY nominations and several wins, most recently in 2012 for "Best Choral Performance" for Life and Breath: Choral Works by René Clausen. Under the artistic direction of Charles Bruffy since 1988, the Kansas City Chorale has recorded works for Chandos Records and Nimbus Records, and was the first North American choir signed to that label. www.kcchorale.org

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