PaTRAM Institute Singers

The PaTRAM Institute Singers, founded in 2013, have become one of the leading North American choirs devoted to Orthodox church music. The choir has also performed and recorded in Russia. The PaTRAM Institute Singers were founded in 2013. PaTRAM stands for Patriarch Tikhon Russian-American Music Institute, an institution in Tiburon, California, stating that its aim is "to foster the authentic and original splendor of Russian Orthodox choral music together with its astounding spiritual depth, in both the English and Slavonic languages." Named for the Russian missionary St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow, who evangelized in North America, PaTRAM has an educational as well as performance component; the Institute came into existence in response to a perceived decline in Orthodox music in North American churches. To this end, the Institute seeks to train singers and conductors, and it has conducted some 30 courses around the U.S. and in Russia. Exemplifying the Institute's musical aims are its two choirs, the PaTRAM Institute Male Choir and the mixed-gender PaTRAM Institute Singers. The choirs were founded by choir director Vladimir Gorbik and are now directed by Peter Jermihov, who was partly trained in Russia. The repertory of the PaTRAM Institute Singers focuses on the core composers of Russian Orthodox church music, including Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, Dmitry Bortniansky, and Pavel Chesnokov, but the group also performs new music in the tradition, often in English, as well as music from other national branches of the Orthodox church. The PaTRAM Institute Singers traveled to Saratov, Russia, to perform and record in 2019. The PaTRAM Institute Singers have released three albums on the Reference Recordings label. Two, Teach Me Thy Statutes (with music by Chesnokov) and The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (a new composition by Kurt Sander), earned Grammy Award nominations for Best Choral Performance. The PaTRAM Institute Singers released the album Blessed Art Thou Among Women, a collection of Marian pieces, in 2020.
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