1964 NORTH AMERICAN TOUR AND TOUR REUNIONS HARVARD GLEE CLUB AND RADCLIFFE CHORAL SOCIETY

The 1964 North American Tour was the second major tour undertaken jointly by the Harvard Glee Club and the Radcliffe Choral Society.  In the summer of 1954 the two choruses made a transcontinental tour which included most of the major cities west of the Mississippi. This venture came to a close at Tanglewood, when the combined choruses joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Berlioz' La Damnation de Faust. This performance was described by Tucker Keiser in the Boston Post of July 11: "Making Tanglewood a last stop in its first transcontinental tour, the Harvard Glee Club and Radcliffe Choral Society turned in a sterling traversal of the many choral passages, winning a collective summa cum laude not only for precision, but for immaculate French diction."   Already in 1921, at the invitation of the French government the Harvard Glee Club had become the first American university glee club to sing an extensive concert tour in Europe. The Glee Club returned to Europe in 1956, where it sang 32 concerts in 50 days before Dutch, Belgian, French, Italian, German, and English audiences. In the summer of 1961, the Glee Club made its historic Far Eastern Tour. The members presented to audiences from Tokyo to Athens choral music which included not only the Glee Club's traditional repertoire of Western music, but also a number of pieces in the languages of the countries visited.

Highlights of the amazing and historically important 1964 North American Tour and its numerous reunions are preserved on this section of the website.