Contact Information:
Buff Lindau, Public Relations
802.654.2536
blindau@smcvt.edu
Thirty-nine members of the Saint Michael's College Liturgical Choir will sing in six schools and churches in Jersey City, Bayonne, Tinton Falls, West Long Branch and Middletown, N.J., on tour January 30 to February 1. The group will be accompanied by the Rev. Brian Cummings, SSE, Saint Michael's director of Edmundite Campus Ministry and a Jersey City native, who will preside and preach at the Masses to be celebrated. Choir Director Jerome Monachino, Saint Michael's associate director of Edmundite Campus Ministry for Liturgical Music, will lead the choir.
The choir includes 23 Saint Michael's students, 16 Saint Michael's alumni and community members. Their schedule is as follows:
Friday, January 30
- Mass at 8:30 a.m. at St. Peter's Preparatory School in Jersey City, N.J.
(Father Brian Cumming's alma mater)
- Mass at 1 p.m. at St. Mary's Parochial School in Bayonne, N.J.
Saturday, January 31
- Mass at 5:30 p.m. at St. Anselm Church in the Wayside Section of Tinton Falls, N.J.
Sunday, February 1
- Mass at 9 a.m. at St. Jerome Church in West Long Branch, N.J.
- 12 noon Mass at St. Mary church in Middletown, N.J.
Saint Michael's Liturgical Choir performs in its own eclectic and popular musical style, using a combination of African, Latin American and Irish flavors along with traditional hymn singing. Guided by their mission of inspiring sung prayer, they perform with great enthusiasm and greatly enhance the experience of all who hear them. The group was one of the select few choirs invited to perform for Pope John Paul II at World Youth Day in Denver, Colo., in the 90s.
Participants in this trip are:
Students:
Julie Relyea; Erin DeBernardi; Laura Hartman; Danni Palardy; Lora Kelley; Rob Sullivan; Joe Kwiatkowski; Al Teodosio; Matt Jordan; Morgan Sullivan; Denelle Noyes; Kristen Andresen; Claire Allessio; Elizabeth Lumsden; Lauren Martin; Miles Gasek; Jon Wheeler; Jared Palardy; Ben Gates; Nathan Adams; Kris Perkins; Jacqui Tuthill; Kaiti Tuthill
Alumni:
Erin Zehnacker; Matt Deluca; Donna Walter; Chris Major; Shaun Bryer; Marianne Strayton; Becca McCray
Volunteers:
Matt Guzowski; Steve Karcher; Tina Gonillo; Chris Pignona; Joann Osborn; Dave Osborn; Peter Engisch; Jerome Monachino; Brian Cummings
Saint Michael's College, founded in 1904 by the Society of St. Edmund and headed by President John J. Neuhauser, is identified by the Princeton Review as one of the nation's
Best 368 Colleges. A liberal arts, residential, Catholic college, Saint Michael's is located just outside of Burlington, Vermont, one of America's top college towns and less than two hours from Montreal. As one of only 270 institutions nationwide with a prestigious Phi Beta Kappa chapter on campus, Saint Michael's has 2,000 full-time undergraduate students, some 500 graduate students and 200 international students. In recent years Saint Michael's students and professors have received Rhodes, Woodrow Wilson, Guggenheim, Fulbright, National Science Foundation and other grants, and Saint Michael's professors have been named Vermont Professor of the Year in four of the last eight years. The college is currently listed as one of the nation's Best Liberal Arts Colleges in the 2009
U.S. News & World Report rankings.