{"id":459763,"date":"2026-09-10T21:04:23","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T21:04:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/459763\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T21:04:23","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T21:04:23","slug":"how-alumni-connections-sparked-the-bob-cole-chamber-choirs-new-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/459763\/","title":{"rendered":"How alumni connections sparked the Bob Cole Chamber Choir’s new album"},"content":{"rendered":"

One night in December 2025, Jonathan Talberg<\/a>, the director of Choral Studies<\/a> at Cal State Long Beach, was having dinner at a popular Long Beach Italian restaurant with Andrew Balogh \u201909.<\/p>\n

Talberg, the Frank M. Pooler<\/a> professor of music, was telling Balogh how well the Bob Cole Chamber Choir<\/a>\u2019s first album, \u201cSoneto,\u201d was doing. It got glowing reviews and over 6,000 downloads and plays per month on streaming services during its first year.<\/p>\n

After some discussion over pizza and pasta, the two agreed to record a second album. Balogh \u2014 a Grammy Award-winning producer who has worked with some of pop and contemporary music\u2019s biggest stars \u2014 would do it for free, if Talberg would hire his engineer and find a great space to record.<\/p>\n

Six months later, they made it happen. For four days and three nights in June, 39 CSULB students from the chamber choir took up residence at the historic Mission San Antonio de Padua<\/a> in Monterey County. After months of practice, they recorded an a cappella album of German and Californian Romantic composers, including two alumni of Cal State Long Beach.<\/p>\n

They sang and recorded for eight hours a day in the heart of the main church, in front of the altar. They cooked and shared meals together in the old kitchen and slept in the same cloisters where monks and Spanish missionaries resided for decades. They learned to blend their voices, sustain their energy for extended periods of time and make beautiful music in unison.<\/p>\n

It was a rare learning experience that gave students a taste of a professional recording environment, offering a glimpse of what a career in music might look and sound like.<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s about telling a story\u2019<\/p>\n

For the second album, to be titled \u201cHorizon,\u201d the choir sang works by 19th century composer Felix Mendelssohn, five tracks by SoCal transplant Matthew Nielsen (who was present), and original compositions by alumni Matthew Lyon Hazzard ’19 and Zanaida Stewart Robles ’02<\/a>, a recent 49 under 49 honoree.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s the best work we\u2019ve ever done,\u201d said Talberg, who also took this choir and the University Choir<\/a> to New York\u2019s Carnegie Hall for a performance this past summer. \u201cThe sound in the church is spectacular, and there was almost zero noise bleed from the outside world. You\u2019ll hear some crickets and birds in the tracks, and we loved them so we\u2019re keeping them in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHorizon,\u201d recorded in the mission 280 miles north of CSULB\u2019s classrooms, is scheduled to be released on all streaming platforms in January 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One night in December 2025, Jonathan Talberg, the director of Choral Studies at Cal State Long Beach, was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459764,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[1818,1820,7,1815,1821,1822,1819,131,133,132,1817,1816],"class_list":["post-459763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-49ers","tag-cal-state","tag-california","tag-college","tag-csu","tag-csulb","tag-dirtbags","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-long-beach-state","tag-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}