Burlington’s Aurora Chamber Singers has focused on Renaissance, baroque and early classical music since the late Bill Metcalfe founded the group as Oriana Singers almost 50 years ago. But for its next concert, titled “Through a Glass, Darkly,” Aurora will break out in 20th-century song.
Instead of presenting Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, William Byrd, Thomas Tallis and other venerable heavyweights in isolation, the program will match each with a contemporary — and, in some cases, living — composer. The twist: Each pair wrote a song to the same text, centuries apart.
Only a very young or completely new director would ask such a thing of the long-established group, half of whose current members sang under the beloved Metcalfe. Hired in mid-August, Aurora music director Cameron Brownell, of Williston, is both. The 33-year-old, originally from Colchester, is well aware of the seismic shift he is introducing.
“I’m much greener at my age,” Brownell admitted by phone, “but I think I bring a lot of enthusiasm and a fair amount of experience.”
Brownell earned a bachelor’s degree in music education and voice performance at the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam and a master’s in sacred music from the University of Notre Dame, with a concentration in voice performance. He took over Aurora from David Neiweem, who directed for seven years, and Jeff Rehbach, the interim director for this year’s spring concert.
“This is old meets new,” Brownell said of his inaugural program.
The conductor had only a few weeks to assemble it and no time to arrange an orchestra, Aurora’s standard accompaniment. Apart from three works with organ accompaniment by Bethany Blake, most of the 14 songs will be a cappella. The singers will get a rest mid-program while Craftsbury violinist Frances Rowell plays instrumental pieces by German baroque composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber and 20th-century Bohemian Arvo Pärt.
Drawing on his sacred-music expertise, Brownell devised such pairings as Byrd’s Renaissance-era “Non Nobis Domine” with a setting of the same biblical psalm by Rosephanye Powell, a Black composer born in 1962 in Atlanta.
“It’s very exciting, very rhythmic,” Brownell said of Powell’s piece. The work’s “stacked ostinatos,” or repeating musical phrases, are a far cry from the “melodic lines and interweaving” of Aurora’s early-music repertoire, he added.
Since moving back to Vermont in 2020, Brownell has assistant-conducted Burlington’s Solaris Vocal Ensemble — a group that specializes in contemporary and 21st-century music. Teaching dominates his remaining time: He is an affiliate-artist voice teacher at the University of Vermont, the chorus teacher at Champlain Valley Union High School, and the kindergarten and first-grade music teacher at Shelburne Community School. On Sundays, he serves as music director at Charlotte Congregational Church.
He also performs. A tenor, he sang in Lyric Theatre’s A Year With Frog and Toad and in KIN, a 1980s pop-inspired musical presented by Workaround Theatre.
Karen Chickering, a 77-year-old Burlington soprano who sings in both Solaris and Aurora, was on the search committee for Aurora’s new director. When Chickering saw that Brownell had applied, she recalled thinking, “He is so busy. How could he possibly take on another thing?”
She is pleased with the hire. “He’s so enthusiastic, so energetic, so expressive. He radiates joy,” Chickering said, recalling that Brownell once broke into a tap dance during rehearsal. The new director is “really shaping the sound of Aurora into a much better harmonious blend,” she noted — necessary for a program that is “stylistically ambitious and not typical Aurora material.”
Chickering has sung with Aurora since it was Oriana. She called founder Metcalfe and his wife, harpsichordist Liz Metcalfe, “powerhouses.” But she’s open to the group’s evolution.
“It doesn’t have to stay the same,” she said.
Aurora Chamber Singers’ fall concert, “Through a Glass, Darkly,” Sunday, November 9, 4-6 p.m., at College Street Congregational Church in Burlington. $12.57-34.01. aurorachambersingers.org
The original print version of this article was headlined “‘Old Meets New’ | Fresh Direction Shakes Up Aurora Chamber Singers’ Fall Concert”
This article appears in Nov 5-11 2025.
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