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USF Chamber Singers Perform Sunday

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 6, 2008

TAMPA - Skills, spirit, experience, intelligence and the ability to work as a team are conductor Richard Zielinski's prerequisites for members of the University of South Florida Chamber Singers.

They are the same criteria that landed Zielinski a football scholarship with the intention of becoming a history teacher. But, thanks to a college choral director who encouraged him to pursue music as a career, the New Tampa resident has spent the past eight years as USF's director of choral activities, a position that includes leading what he views as the university's premier choral ensemble.

"They are an extraordinary group of young people," Zielinski said after one of last week's auditions in which 150 students tried out and 60 were accepted and began rehearsing for their upcoming performance in Temple Terrace.

Zielinski described the four-day auditioning process as "draining."

"Each singer is handed music, and they have to learn it in 24 hours," he said. "And, I've been sitting in my office until about 10 every night weeding through the audition tapes."

The singers will perform a free concert at 4 p.m. Sunday at St. Catherine of Alexandria Episcopal Church, 502 Druid Hills Road.

Joyce McKenzie

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