Waymart, Pennsylvania, July 29, 2022
Photo: benedictsheehanmusic.com
Benedict Sheehan has spearheaded and participated in several internationally acclaimed and Grammy-nominated Orthodox choral projects.
Now the director of music at St. Tikhon’s Monastery and Seminary in Waymart, Pennsylvania, and artistic director and founder of the monastery’s professional St. Tikhon Choir, has received more recognition, taking home the American Prize’s Dale Warland Award in Choral Conducting.
The American Prize is a series of annual competitions in the performing arts, recognizing recorded performances of classical music. The competition site writes of Sheehan:
GRAMMY®-nominated conductor and composer Benedict Sheehan has been called “a rising star in the choral world” (Catholic Sentinel). He is Artistic Director and Founder of The Saint Tikhon Choir and the Artefact Ensemble, as well as Director of Music at St. Tikhon’s Monastery and Seminary in Pennsylvania. His Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, on which he conducts The Saint Tikhon Choir, garnered acclaim as “simply beyond praise” (Fanfare), “extravagantly beautiful” (The American Organist), and “a new standard for excellence” (The Living Church Magazine). His innovative “story score,” featured on Skylark Vocal Ensemble’s 2021 GRAMMY®-nominated album Once Upon A Time, has been hailed as “evocative” (Gramophone) and “otherworldly” (Boston Musical Intelligencer). His newest story score, based on Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, recently recorded by Skylark, will be released in late 2021. Sheehan’s music is published by Oxford University Press, Artefact Publications, Musica Russica, and others. On the web at benedictsheehanmusic.com.
Sheehan’s Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom was nominated for a Grammy this year. The St. Tikhon Choir was also nominated last year for its live recording of Alexander Kastalsky’s Requiem for Fallen Brothers.
Sheehan is also a co-founder of the Patriarch Tikhon Russian-American Music Institute, which was nominated for Grammys in 2019 and 2020.
Follow OrthoChristian on Twitter, Vkontakte, Telegram, WhatsApp, MeWe, and Gab!
