Advance price concert tickets may be purchased by calling (843) 444-5774.  Full price tickets will also be available at the door one hour prior to each event.

Bios
Timothy Koch
Music Director and Conductor

Email:     tim@fumcmb.org

"I consider Tim Koch one of the great choral conductors of our time."
 
 
- Samuel Adler, American composer, Juilliard School of Music 
 

Timothy Koch serves his tenth season as Music Director and Conductor of the Carolina Master Chorale in 2009-2010. His tenure has been marked by notable growth in artistic achievement, extensive touring, acclaimed performances of the masterworks for chorus and orchestra, opera productions, commissioning of numerous major new works, formation of the Carolina Youth Chorale, and expanded educational programming.

 

Koch has led the CMC in tour performances throughout Italy in 2003, and Denmark, Germany, and the Czech Republic in 2005, to New York’s Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in 2007, and throughout Spain in June 2008. In South Carolina, Koch and the CMC have presented acclaimed performances of Bach's St. John Passion, the Mozart and Brahms Requiems, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, and Beethoven’s Mass in C. Koch has prepared the CMC for performances of Verdi’s Requiem and Stabat Mater, the Poulenc Gloria, Schoenberg’s Survivor from Warsaw, and Orff’s Carmina Burana, among others. A 2008 performance of Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms with the Long Bay Symphony inspired Myrtle Beach Herald reviewer, William Hamilton to proclaim,

 

“The appropriately named Carolina Master Chorale is a treasure...”

 

Koch and the CMC embraced a new genre in 2006 with a full concert performance of Bizet’s beloved opera Carmen. The Chorale followed with a semi-staged production of Verdi’s La Traviata in May 2008.  Following the Verdi performances, William Hamilton again wrote for the Herald,

 

“The remarkable Carolina Master Chorale….

(made) listeners completely unaware this is a volunteer group.…

and not a full time professional music ensemble.” 

 

Koch and the CMC plan that the great opera repertory will now be regularly represented in future CMC season programming.

 

The CMC growth has also been marked by numerous successful collaborations.  Koch has forged collaborative projects and relationships with the Long Bay Symphony and South Carolina Philharmonic Orchestras, conductors Charles Jones Evans, Nicholas Smith, Donald Neuen, Robert Page, David Rayl, André Thomas, and Eph Ehly, Viennese baritone, Benno Schollum, American soprano Shelley Jameson, and internationally renowned mezzo-soprano Kirstin Chàvez. In recent seasons, the CMC has shared talent and resources with Conway’s Theatre of the Republic, Litchfield Dance Arts, and the Myrtle Beach School of Performing Arts for a number of popular community projects.

 

Teamed with CMC Composer-in-Residence Andrew Fowler, Koch has presented nearly twenty premieres of important new works by the composer. In February 2007 members of the CMC participated in the world premiere of Fowler’s most important work to date, Directions for Singing, a 45-minute work for chorus, orchestra, narrator, and soprano and baritone soloists, at New York’s Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, under the baton of world-renowned choral maestro, Eph Ehly. The opening concert of the 2008-2009 Season  featured Fowler’s newest work, A Lover’s Day, Love Songs of Pablo Neruda. The 2009-2010 Season wirh spotlight an expanded version of Fowler's poignant Christmas oratorio, An Outbreak of Peace, and the world premieres of Five Love Songs, and Peace in the 21st Century. Koch and Fowler have conceived an opera on Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides which Fowler is composing for premiere some time in 2010 or 2011.

 

As founder/music director of the professional Carolina Chamber Chorale (also known as the Tim Koch Singers), Koch inspired widespread artistic achievement, including five commercial recordings on the Albany and Naxos/Milken Archive labels. His work with that ensemble has been lauded by...

 

Gramophone Magazine,

 

“a wonderful compendium of finely-judged performances,"

 

the Charleston Post and Courier,

 

“You have not heard anything like this. Ever."

 

and American Composer Samuel Adler,

 

“the finest professional choir in America."

 

Koch holds degrees from Illinois Wesleyan University and the University of Illinois and the Doctor of Musical Arts from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. He has taught on the faculties of the Eastman School of Music, Syracuse University, The University of Southern Mississippi, where in 1998 he was chosen as the sole USM recipient of the Mississippi legislature’s HEADWAE award, the University of South Carolina, the College of Charleston, and Illinois Wesleyan University, where he served as Visiting Director of Choral Activities in Spring 2009 . He is married to Grand Strand native and CMC member Jo Nell (Brown) Koch. He also serves the community as Music Director at First United Methodist Church, Myrtle Beach.

 

Tim and Jo Nell Koch with former South Carolina Governor Richard Riley

 
 Andrew Fowler
Accompanist and Composer-in-Residence

Email:     AndyFowler@sc.rr.com

Andrew Fowler, composer-in-residence and pianist for the Carolina Master Chorale, is a native of Myrtle Beach. He received the M.M. (music theory) and B.A. (piano performance) degrees from the University of South Carolina, and the Ph.D. (music theory) from the University of Texas at Austin. Fowler has served on the faculties of Auburn University at Montgomery, Cornell College, the University of North Texas, and the University of Texas at Austin, where he taught theory, history, and counterpoint. While at Auburn University at Montgomery and at Cornell College, he also served as Director of Choral Activities. He is currently Music Director at Trinity United Methodist Church in Conway, and also is Financial Development Coordinator for the Carolina Master Chorale.

Fowler’s Directions for Singing (for mixed chorus, soloists, and orchestra) received an enthusiastic world premiere at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center in February, 2007. Commissioned on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of Charles Wesley’s birth, the 55 minute work reflects Fowler’s interest in creating new ways of combining musical, theatrical, and narrative elements.  His multi-media collaborative work Schul at Ulla (with visual artist Hugh Lifson) was performed at the Nobel Conference on Peace in 1999. His interest in state and local history has led to the creation of works such as the song cycle Mary Chestnut’s Diaries (for Soprano/Piano), Lowcountry Tales (for mixed chorus and piano) and Tales of the Kings Highway (premiered by the Long Bay Symphony Orchestra in February 2004), Over Yonder’s Ocean (2007:  based upon original Murrells Inlet Spirituals), and Carolina On My Mind (2007), and Carolina Jazz Masters (2007). Fowler has composed for musical theater and stage venues, and regularly serves as music director and orchestrator for Conway’s Theater of the Republic.  As a pianist, he has presented lecture/recital performances of masterworks by Liszt, Schumann, and others of the mid-nineteenth central European school at national music conferences. His articles on 19th century piano repertoire have appeared in various music journals.  His choral works can be found in the catalogues of Abingdon, Augsburg, and Roger Dean Publishing, and his works are performed throughout the United States.   Also, he is an avid interpreter of the 20th c. American jazz standards, and performs at various venues across the Grand Strand. 

Fowler’s works written specifically for he Carolina Master Chorale include Dayspring (2001), Olde World Carols (2002), Antiphonal Noels (2003), Lowcountry Tales (2003), Christmas Carmina (2004), Songs of Travel (2005) and Wintertide (2005), An Outbreak of Peace (2006), Over Yonder’s Ocean (2007), Carolina On My Mind (2007), Carolina Jazz Masters (2007), A Sacred Harp Christmas (2007), as well as choral/instrumental arrangements of the Broadway tradition.  This 2008-09 season’s first concert features another Fowler premiere  titled A Lover’s Day: Poems of Pablo Neruda (for baritone solo, mixed chorus, and chamber orchestra). The holiday concert will reprise his Olde World Carols. 

His wife, Scarlet, is lead teacher and administrative supervisor for the Myrtle Beach Christian Academy High School. They enjoy any time shared with their children  Nathan, Gwyn, Tiffany, Austin, and Dalton.