Galen Marshall
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Galen Marshall was the founder of the Masterworks Chorale at the College of San Mateo in San Mateo, California in September 1964. Born in 1933 in Modesto, California, Marshall attended San Francisco State University, where his roommate was future singer/actor Harve Presnell, and he earned a B.A. Marshall's longtime mentor at the university was Dr. John Tegnell. After teaching at Bay Area high schools and City College of San Francisco, Marshall joined the faculty of the College of San Mateo in 1964. He was director of both the A Capella Choir and the Masterworks Chorale and taught various music classes. With his choirs, he sought very high standards and developed a series of "rules" in his rehearsals, some of them inspired by legendary choral director Robert Shaw. A common practice was the use of singing nonsense syllables or the beat numbers during rehearsals. In the early 1980s, some of Marshall's singers sang with Shaw at concerts in San Francisco and then Shaw commissioned Ralph Hooper to write a new setting of the traditional mass for the Masterworks Chorale during the "Festival of Masses." Longtime members of the choir still remember watching Marshall consult with Shaw during the final rehearsal in St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco, California. Marshall retired in 1997 and is now music director emeritus of the Masterworks Chorale. He lives in Groveland, California with his wife Linelle, who sang in the Masterworks Chorale and the Robert Shaw Festival Singers.
[edit] Sources
- Interviews with Galen Marshall, 1965-1985
- Eyewitness accounts
- Masterworks Chorale website
