Virginia Glee Club

Virginia Glee Club
The Virginia Glee Club in 1893, including conductor Harrison Randolph and author of the Good Old Song E. A. Craighill. Courtesy, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library.
Background information
Origin	Charlottesville, Virginia
Genres	Classical
Years active	1871–1905,1915–present
Website	http://www.virginiagleeclub.org/

The Virginia Glee Club is a critically acclaimed men's chorus based at the University of Virginia. It performs both traditional and contemporary vocal works, typically in TTBB arrangements. Founded in 1871, the Glee Club is the University's oldest musical organization and one of the oldest all-male collegiate vocal ensembles in the United States. It is currently conducted by Frank Albinder.

The Virginia Glee Club was founded in 1871 as the Cabell House Men. In the 1893–1894 session of the University, the Glee Club was combined with other extant student musical groups to form the Glee, Banjo, and Mandolin Club, a more permanent organization, with professor of mathematics (and University Chapel organist) Harrison Randolph as the director. During this period, the group toured major Southern cities annually, playing to standing room only crowds in Richmond and traveling as far afield as Atlanta,St. Louis. and Memphis, according to contemporary accounts, donating the profits to the Athletic Association of the University of Virginia. The group continued to perform and tour the South through the early 1900s; they are recorded as visiting Atlanta on tour under the direction of a student, John Shishmanian, in October 1905, and a contemporary letter attests to their existence in that fall 1905.

After the fall of 1905, the group disbanded and reformed periodically; University historian Philip Alexander Bruce indicates it disbanded in 1905, then reformed in 1910–1911 and began to perform again. The group went on hiatus for a year in the fall of 1912, citing "disadvantageous circumstances" with the hope of reforming later. It apparently did reform in late 1913 or early 1914, based on a January 1914 photo of the group. Finally, in January 1915, it was reorganized under the leadership of Professor Alfred Lawrence (A.L.) Hall-Quest (professor of educational psychology); Hall-Quest is said to have modeled the group after the glee club of his alma mater, Princeton University.