Crescendo’s Chorus consists of 30 – 40 auditioned singers selected from the tri-state area of Connecticut, Massachussets, and NY, and a group of 8 – 12 professional singers. The first project was performed in November 2004. This ensemble appears at two yearly concerts, March/April and November, singing two concerts each time. The Chorus rehearses from January through June, and from September through November. Singers are encouraged to participate in Workshops  and to take private singing lessons. We sing in many foreign languages, and the repertoire is unusual: premieres of rarely heard Renaissance and Baroque works, as well as contemporary music.

Crescendo’s Vocal Ensemble is a subset of 8 – 16 very skilled amateurs, semi-professionals, and professional singers who perform works for smaller vocal ensembles on Crescendo’s concerts. The Crescendo Vocal Ensemble held its first concert in February 2004. This group only performs on specific projects. Notable performances have included a concert with Johann Sebastian Bach motetts at Music Mountain Chamber Music Festival and the performance of di Lasso’s Sibylline Prophecies. The Vocal Ensemble has also performed at several benefit events. Otherwise this group is part of the Chorus for Crescendo’s major projects.

The Period Instrument Orchestra of professional players was founded in 2007 and has been part of several U.S. premieres of large Renaissance and Baroque works by German, Czech, Polish and Latin American composers. The core of the group includes string players such as Malgorzata Ziemnicka, violins, David Bakamjian, violoncello and Jane Hershey, viola da gamba and violone, Rodrigo Tarraza, traverso, Tricia van Oers, recorder, Geoffrey Burgess, oboe, Stefanie Corwin, bassoon, Douglas Freundlich, Christa Patton harp, and Juan Mesa, Ed Brewer and Mariken Palmboom organ and harpsichord. Early wind players have included Kiri Tollaksen and Douglas Kirk, cornetto, Dan Meyers, dulzians, Mack Ramsey and Eric Schmalz, sackbuts.

Since 2006 we have collaborated with Andean folk players and singers in projects of contemporary and early music.  Not only staples like Misa Criolla by Ariel Ramirez, but also works by award winning Chilean composer Javier Farias and others. Crescendo has dared to combine classical period instruments with Andean folk instruments in recreating a sound that would have been the reallity of Latin American colonial music. Our most important collaborators are the musicians of Alturas Duo: viola and charango player Carlos Boltes and guitarist Scott Hill.

Our cast of Baroque voice specialists include well known and internationally established singers, such as soprano Julianne Baird and countertenor Nicholas Tamagna, as well as early music specialists from Boston and New York, such as Mary Gerbi and Melissa Hughes, sopranos, Martin Near, countertenor, Philip Anderson, Peter Shea and Pablo Bustos, tenors and Steven Fasano, baritone.