Broadway Swings at Breen
The Singers' Club of Cleveland
Saturday, May 16 at 7:30 p.m.
Breen Center for the Performing Arts
St. Ignatius High School
2008 W 30th St, Cleveland
The Singers’ Club collaborates with Baldwin Wallace University’s Music Theater Department to fill the evening with a retrospective of Broadway’s best melodies. They’ll showcase some young future stars of Broadway and other stages in this irresistible season finale.
Throughout its 120-year history, The Singers’ Club of Cleveland has presented the finest in music for men's voices, dynamic young soloists, and internationally known guest artists. Through a scholarship program, local voice students receive stipends to continue their music education. The Club commissions and performs music for the enjoyment of its audiences and as a lasting contribution to the musical literature.
Organized at the request of the Cleveland YMCA in November 1891, The Singers’ Club presented its first concert on May 19, 1892 at Association Hall; the event was artistically and financially successful. From the beginning, membership reflected a cross section of the greater Cleveland area, with men of varied backgrounds, professions and avocations sharing a love for fine choral music. During the next many years, three yearly subscription concerts were presented by a choir growing in membership. As the Club expanded in size, so did its repertoire. Membership auditions and dues were instituted, and the awarding of scholarships for music students was established. On several occasions, The Singers’ Club appeared with The Cleveland Orchestra in Severance Hall. Former conductors have included Albert Rees Davis, Beryl Rubinstein, Boris Goldovsky, George F. Strickling, Robert M. Stofer, Frank Hruby and Thomas Shellhammer. Notable guest artists have included Tito Schipa, Nelson Eddy, Fred Waring, Eunice Podis, Sherrill Milnes and Mark Doss.
Dr. Melvin P. Unger came to the Cleveland area in 1998 to become Director of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute at Baldwin-Wallace College, a position that he continues to hold. He also conducts the B-W Singers, a relatively new ensemble of some 70 members. His previous academic and choral directing experience was principally in Edmonton, Alberta, where he taught at the North American Baptist College and conducted the Da Camera Singers for 17 years.
Mel Unger is a graduate of the University of Illinois (Doctor of Musical Arts in Choral Music), the University of Oregon (Master of Music in Choral Conducting), and the University of Saskatchewan (Bachelor of Music in Choral Music Education). He was one of the first North American students to study under renowned conductor and Bach specialist Helmuth Rilling, at the State Conservatory of Music in Frankfurt, Germany.
Unger’s choirs have appeared at a number of competitions, festivals, and choral conventions in Canada and the United States. In 1996, his Da Camera Singers were chosen to serve as principal chorus-in-residence at the Classical Seminar-Festival in Eisenstadt, Austria; during this time, the chorus performed the Vierne Mass at St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna under Unger’s direction.
Scott Plate is an award-winning free-lance actor and director whose work is featured frequently on Northeast Ohio's stages. He has worked regionally as actor and director in Atlanta at the Alliance Theatre, Seven Stages, and the Actors' Express, in Boise at the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, and on North Carolina's Outer Banks in The Lost Colony. While in Cleveland he has worked on over eighty productions, at such venues as Severance Hall, Playhouse Square, The Cleveland Play House, Cain Park, Porthouse Theatre, Dobama Theatre, the Halle Theatre, and Cleveland Public Theatre. Selected area and regional acting work includes Inherit the Wind and Unsung Cole...and classics too at the Cleveland Play House, fourteen productions with Great Lakes Theatre Festival, A Steady Rain, Angels in America, Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, Thom Pain...based on nothing, Homebody/Kabul, Cherry Docs, Batboy: The Musical, and The Last Five Years, all on professional area stages. Selected area directing work includes award-winning productions of The Waiting Room, Closer, Mrs. Warren's Profession and The Old Neighborhood, the Ohio Premiere of Pangs of the Messiah, and acclaimed productions of Blue Door, Speech & Debate, The New Century, The Rocky Horror Show, Pulp, and Blackbird. His 2007 production of Take Me Out was a runner-up for the Northern Ohio Live Award of Achievement. For BW, he directed the North American premiere of a new translation of Sophocles' Antigone by Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, as well as The Crucible, Parade, Blood Wedding, and Titanic. He was a directing fellow under Kenny Leon at Atlanta's Alliance Theatre, where he assisted with the Southeastern premiere of August Wilson's The Piano Lesson and the world premiere of Pearl Cleage's Flyin' West, and where he directed productions of La Ronde and The Imaginary Cuckold for the Alliance Theatre School. He has over two hundred on-camera and voice-over credits in local, national and international commercials and industrial films. Feature film credits include the HBO pictures release "Proximity," and Micar Productions' "The Sleep of Reason."