Hudson Shad

Though the six-man ensemble Hudson Shad (five singers and a pianist) debuted officially in 1992, their nucleus formed in 1977 when three of them made their Carnegie Hall debuts as soloists in Penderecki’s "Magnificat". In 1989, the Arts at St.Ann’s in Brooklyn asked bass Wilbur Pauley to contract a quartet to perform as The Family in Kurt Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins with Marianne Faithfull. The response was favorable.

Over more than three decades, the Hudson Shad quartet has racked up more performances as The Family in The Seven Deadly Sins than any other group in history. They have sung in almost eighty different locations, from Arezzo to Zagreb, numbering well over one hundred performances worldwide. They participated in a staging of the work, in a double bill with
Weill’s “Der Lindbergflug”, at the Macerata Festival in Italy. They have thrice recorded the work: with Kurt Masur and the NYPhilharmonic; with Ms. Faithfull and the RSO-Wien conducted by Dennis Russell Davies; and with Storm Large and the Oregon Symphony under Carlos Kalmar. In 2008, Hudson Shad was honored to participate in the Carnegie Hall premier of the work, with Ute Lemper and the Toronto Symphony.

Other orchestra appearances by Hudson Shad have featured more Weill: “Kleine Mahagonny” with the St.Paul Chamber Orchestra; “Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny” at the Salzburg Festival. The Schubert bicentennial in 1997 found Hudson Shad returning to the NY Philharmonic for orchestral works with men’s voices, and they arranged Schubert songs using the Max Reger orchestrations with the Bruckner Orchestra in Linz. Hudson Shad
debuted as Wild Things in Oliver Knussen’s Where The Wild Things Are, conducted by the composer. They have developed their own English translation of Stravinsky’s Renard and have performed it at the Miyazaki Festival and the Saratoga Performing Arts Center under Charles Dutoit. They sang in Philip Glass’ Fall of the House of Usher (double-billed with Sins) at the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, and they appeared with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra as
the barbershop quartet in Music Man.

In 1999, Hudson Shad starred in the musical Band In Berlin at the Helen Hayes Theater on Broadway, in a tribute to the legendary German singing group, The Comedian Harmonists.

Recent performances include the Sins with Storm Large at the Princeton Festival in 2022 and with the Oregon Symphony in 2019; Sins with the Shanghai Symphony and Maestro Dutoit in July 2019; Sins on a tour of Germany with the Kammerakademie Potsdam and Ms.Lemper in October 2019. Hudson Shad debuted at the Tanglewood Festival in 2019 in a Charles Ives
program with the pianist Jeremy Denk.

The members of the Hudson Shad quartet are: Mark Bleeke, Tenor; Eric Edlund, Baritone; Peter Becker, Bass/Baritone; Wilbur Pauley, Bass.