During Bruce Trinkley’s tenure the Penn State Glee Club released two LP recordings and four Compact Disc recordings. Bruce conceived and planned the recordings, selected the repertory, and conducted the recording sessions. The recordings included traditional repertory but also a number of original works by Bruce and many of his arrangements for the Glee Club and the Hilos.
Three of the CDs are available for purchase by clicking on the CD icons below. Then click on the Printable order form. Finally, on the bar at the top of the form, click on “Open with Google Docs.” Here you will be able to order the CD of your choice. (Please note that the sequence described may vary depending on your computer and your particular browser. The directions work well with my Dell PC and Google Chrome.)
Please note that The Green Album is no longer available. For infomation about The Green Album, scroll to the bottom of this page. There you will find links to the Liner Notes, and you will be able to listen to and download the individual tracks from the CD.
Penn State Glee Club
Songs of Two Bellevilles
Songs of Two Bellevilles CD recording is now available from the Composer. All proceeds go to UNICEF.
The CD features two song cycles, inspired by Bellevilles in northeastern Paris and central Pennsylvania. The poems by Emily Grosholz were written in Paris, and those by Julia Kasdorf were inspired by the Mennonite community of Belleville in central PA. The performers are all cherished longtime collaborators: Emily Grosholz Songs is performed by Amanda Silliker, mezzo-soprano, and Svetlana Rodionova, piano. Mennonite Songs, settings of poems by Julia Kasdorf, is performed by Richard Kennedy, tenor, and Steven Smith, piano.
Portraits of Women
Portraits of Women: Volume 2 For 2 sopranos and piano. One Life: The Rachel Carson Project
Purchase the score. Buy the CD. Read the lyrics by Jason Charnesky.
Portraits of Women Volume 2 - Opera & Cantata is an anthology of duets for two sopranos and piano by contemporary, award-winning composers. Commissioned and compiled by Soprani Compagni, this volume offers new chamber operas and cantatas for the voice studio and stage, themed around women who have embraced their true worth and calling and have dared to change their world. Scores are printed and shipped on demand. One Life: The Rachel Carson Project is based on the life and writings of Rachel Carson. She was born near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1907 and attended the Pennsylvania College for women, now Chatham College. She worked as a marine scientist and biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Her major writings are Silent Spring, Under the Sea-wind, The Sea Around Us, and The Edge of the Sea.
Silent Spring (1962) was the first publication to expose the dangers of pesticides and launched the ecology movement in America. Rachel Carson died of cancer in 1964.
The Green Album
The Green Album
From across the pond, to the hills of Pennsylvania, The Green Album features the treasured folksongs of the British Isles and United States. In addition, director Bruce Trinkley takes center stage with recordings of selections from his major works: The Last Voyage of Captain Meriwether Lewis, about the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and One Life; The Rachel Carson Project, about the life and work of Rachel Carson, the great Pennsylvania ecologist and author of Silent Spring. No Glee Club album would be complete without selections from the Hi-Lo’s and Penn State Fight Songs!
Read the Introduction to The Green Album.
Read the Liner Notes.
Click on the titles below to listen to or download a track.
1.
THE RAKES OF MALLOW arr. Bruce Trinkley
During Bruce Trinkley’s tenure as Glee Club director, he has arranged more than 200 songs for us. These Irish and Scottish works are some of his most beautiful arrangements, the result of a recent sabbatical in those green British isles.
2. LIMERICK IS BEAUTIFUL arr. Bruce Trinkley
The Glee Club sings of the beauty of the Irish town of Limerick on the River Shannon while soloist Richard Kennedy, the quintessential Irish tenor, sings of his love for the Colleen Bawn from Garryowen. Feel like you need a map of Ireland? Relax. The simple charm of this beautiful Irish ballad will guide you better than any map.
3. LASSIE LIE NEAR ME arr. Bruce Trinkley
Long ago, Bruce played the role of Mr. Lundy in his high school’s production of Brigadoon. Even since then he dreamt of visiting Scotland. Bruce finally got his wish in 2001, and while staying at a castle in Arbroath, Scotland, he produced this arrangement of a Scottish love song.
4. THE ROAD TO DUNDEE arr. Bruce Trinkley
This beautiful ballad features tenor Richard Kennedy in a Scottish mode. The songs tells of meeting a young lassie while “cauld winter was howling o’er muir and o’er mountain . . . on the road to Dundee.” The North Sea blows cold across the coast of eastern Scotland. But the yearnings of love are warmer than any winter wind.
5. DRINK TO ME ONLY WITH THINE EYES arr. Marshall Bartholomew (1885-1978)
This arrangement by the legendary director of the Yale Glee Club is well nigh perfect. The text by Ben Jonson (1573-1637) creates the exact opposite of a drinking song. If the young girl only breathes upon the cup her beau will need no alcohol, for he will grow drunk with love thinking of her lips having touched the empty goblet.
6. VIVA TUTTI Edited by Ralph Hunter
The Hi-Los, founded in 1933, have been wowing Glee Club audiences with glees, folksongs and novelty tunes for more than a half century. We present four Hi-Los favorites from the British repertory. This three-voiced anonymous 18th century English glee has a text in Italian that translates: “Here’s to women. Hail to all the lovely women.”
7. DOWN BY THE SALLY GARDENS Arr. Henry G. Mishkin
One of the loveliest of the old Irish airs, this is the traditional setting of the poem by the great Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939).
8. SWANSEA TOWN arr. Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
“Oh! farewell to you my Nancy” sing the sailors departing from the port of Swansea in South Wales. This rollicking sea shanty is actually a folksong from Hampshire in the south of England.
9. I’VE GOT A LOVELY BUNCH OF COCONUTS Fred Heatherton
The quintessential British music hall song - you miss the juggling act that accompanies the song, but you can’t miss the cockney accents of the singers.
Three selections from The Last Voyage of Captain Meriwether Lewis
Bruce Trinkley. Words by Jason Charnesky
Bruce’s cantata was premiered by the Glee Club at Homecoming 1999. Three selections from that performance feature guest baritone Mark Whatley and the Castalia Piano Quartet with James Lyon, violin; Tim Deighton, viola; Kim Cook, violoncello; and Marylène Dosse, piano.
10. THE CORPS OF DISCOVERY Bruce Trinkley. Mark Whatley, baritone.
Meriwether Lewis issues a call for hunters and soldiers to join the Corps of Discovery, due to leave St. Louis in May 1804 and travel up the Missouri, across the mountains to “the Western Sea.”
11.
MESS CALL Bruce Trinkley
Soloists: Josh Tremblay, John Wile, Eric Holmes, and Adam Murdough.
Jason’s lyrics assemble the actual foods the expedition ate during the three-year journey into this rollicking patter song. Included in the menu are buffalo humps, beaver tails (a relished delicacy), and even leather (when the food ran out).
What keeps them going, truth be told, is neither fame nor grace nor gold.
What puts the woodsmen in the mood is food!
Catfish, badger, elk and bear, antelope rump and beaver tail.
Suet dumplings, bacon, beans, pheasant, grouse, and ducks and geese.
We traversed the grand Missouri and became so migratory, ev'ry dinner was a treat.
We are men of wits and by it we procure our daily diet for each man: nine pounds of meat.
Canada goose and whitetailed deer, buffalo calf with excellent veal,
Trout and salmon, venison, buffalo tongue and buffalo hump.
One can fix a dandy trifle if he's handy with his rifle and not choosy what he's et.
Let ze hatchet be your cleaver. Mix a bouillebaisse of beaver! You expecting crepe Suzette?
Flour with some more dried fish, leather straps and candle wax,
Horse and dog, pronghorn goat for rump steak and chuck steak and chuck.
How much steak would a woodchuck make if a woodchuck was chuck steak?
Ducks and geese and buffalo humps and chuck steak is food!
12.
BITTERROOT Bruce Trinkley. Mark Whatley, baritone.
The expedition’s most harrowing phase was the crossing of the Bitterroot Mountains, in what is now Montana and Idaho. Lewis is prompted to examine his life and its purpose in a dramatic monologue. Eventually the expedition succeeds in reaching “the Western Sea.”
13. SPRING SONG Bruce Trinkley. Words by Jason Charnesky.
From One Life: The Rachel Carson Project. This paean to spring was the centerpiece of a cantata premiered by the Oriana Singers in 2000 and honoring the life and work of Rachel Carson, the founder of the modern ecology movement in the United States. Carson was born and educated in Pennsylvania.
catching the air poised between so fiery an April sun and the lush green earth.
The woods themselves are melting, giving way to silt and sprout.
The permanent earth is ground from another ancient age's permanent rock and slips towards
some other thing permanently.
More permanent than this our hope, our only place, this earthly garden, the ever returning
spring of life.
14. SONG OF PEACE Vincent Persichetti (1815-1987). Ann Marie Rigler, organ.
The Glee Club has frequently sung native Pennsylvania composer Vincent Persichetti’s stirring prayer for peace. We are pleased to feature the School of Music’s newest faculty member, Ann Marie Rigler, on the magnificent Esber Recital Hall organ.
15.WE SHALL WALK THROUGH THE VALLEY IN PEACE arr. William Appling
Bill’s astoundingly effective arrangement is a favorite of every generation of Glee Clubbers. This is the third recording the Glee Club has made of this Glee Club favorite.
16. DON’T BE WEARY, TRAVELER arr. Bruce Trinkley
During his stay at the Hambidge Center in Georgia, Bruce was inspired to arrange this African American spiritual.
17. RIDE ON, KING JESUS arr. Bruce Trinkley Another product of Bruce’s stay in Georgia. Recorded live at the 2001 Homecoming Concert with the astonishing piano playing of five-year veteran Glee Club accompanist Blake Hoppes ‘01.
18. TIME OF THE SEASON Rod Argent
Released in November 1968 by The Zombies, the Varsity Quartet recreates one of the hits of the 1960s during their rousing performance at the Homecoming Concert.
19. TITLE OF THE SONG DaVinci’s Notebook
The Quartet stops the show with this step-by-step blue print of every boy-group ballad ever penned. Take notes, and write your own hit! The song was co-written by Paul Sabourin, now a member of DaVinci’s Notebook and a member of the Glee Club in the early 1990s.
20. HEAVENLY BODIES Claude Morrison
The Nylons were founded in the late seventies in Toronto and helped to create the contemporary a cappella movement. The Quartet sings one of The Nylons’ greatest hits.
21. HARVEST DUE Bruce Trinkley. Lyrics by Roger Cornish and Don Tucker.In 1976 three collaborators wrote The Pennsylvania Bicentennial Wagon Train Show, which traveled on fifty Conestoga wagons across the entire United States and finally converged at Valley Forge for the Fourth of July. Harvest Due became the favorite anthem of the show. It was recorded on the Glee Club’s second LP (remember LPs?) with Doug Smith, ‘78. We now feature Norman Spivey from the School of Music faculty. Norman sang this in his debut with the Glee Club and we are proud to recreate that performance.
22. HURRAH PENN STATE Rex Myers, arr. Bruce Trinkley
1914 was a great year for music at Penn State: Jimmy Leyden, ‘14, wrote the words and music to The Nittany Lion and Rex Myers, also of the class of ‘14, wrote and published Hurrah Penn State.
23. THE WILLOW Bruce Trinkley
In 1996 more than a thousand performers gathered in Eisenhower Auditorium to perform Mountain Laurels, Bruce Trinkley’s choral symphony. The texts were all by central Pennsylvania poets. The middle section of the work, Old Mainia, featured texts from Froth: the Penn State Humor Magazine. The words to The Willow were first published in the February 1912 issue of Froth. Long before the Nittany Lion became Penn State’s mascot, the Old Willow stood on the Mall and was the revered object of all Penn State upperclassmen and beanie-capped freshmen.
24. THE CAMPUS Bruce Trinkley. The text is from the June 1910 issue of Froth.
If thou could speak what would thou say?
What stirring mem'ries thou dost hold
Of tales not in our hist'ries told;
Of fierce encounters; scraps gone by,
The lower classman's battle cry.
The morning drill; the dress parade,
With studes in warrior's blue arrayed.
Upon thy seats beneath yon trees,
The strutting Seniors smoke in peace.
The Soph'mores seek thy shady nooks,
And Juniors with their pond'rous books.
Thy slopes have echoed many a sigh,
And naughty Soph'more's warlike cry,
While o'er thee now in joy serene,
Rides Duster in his gas machine.
Ah, many a fond sight thou hast seen,
Thou dear old campus fair and green.
25. FIGHT ON STATE Words and music by Joe Saunders, ‘15.
The Blue Band has made this tune familiar to the whole country. The Glee Club’s version includes the words. The verve and energy of this piece make it one of the most beloved of Penn State songs.
26. ALMA MATER Fred Lewis Pattee (1863-1950). Arr. Hummel Fishburn.
The Alma Mater was written in 1901 by Pattee, the first professor of American literature (the first anywhere). And though you’ve heard this anthem countless times before, we are pleased to present for the very first time the debut recording of the original version of the Alma Mater, with all six verses. Here are the last two, seldom seen, verses. So hats off, please rise, and sing out loud:
Soon we know a guiding hand
Will disperse our little band,
Yet we’ll ever loyal stand
State to thee, State to thee.
Than Rah! Rah! For dear old State,
For our love can ne’er abate!
Ring the song with joy elate,
Loud and long, loud and long.
27. GOD BLESS AMERICA Irving Berlin (1888-1989). arr. Anthony Walts.
Our dear beloved late Tony Walts arranged this immortal patriotic song for the Glee Club’s centennial in 1988. This was especially appropriate since Berlin and the Glee Club share birth dates of 1888. May God bless America, and every one on earth.
RECORDING ENGINEER Kent Klouser
ART DIRECTOR Kristin Sommese
GRAPHIC DESIGNER Kristin Sommese
SPECIAL THANKS TO:
Blake Hoppes, Russell Bloom, Jason Charnesky, Kathy Walker, and Amy Milgrub Marshall.
The Green Album was recorded in the Esber Recital Hall in October and November 2001. Live performances from the Homecoming Concerts, November 6, 1999, and November 3, 2001, in Schwab Auditorium.
Music published by 6. Lawson-Gould; 7. ECS; 8. G.Schirmer; 14. Presser; 15. World Library; 18 BMI; 19. BMI; 20. BMI; 27. ASCAP