Adesso was founded in 2001 by a group of dedicated choristers committed to performing quality music by living composers. We seek to create a forum for the many unsung composers who might be living right in our neighborhoods!

Currently the chorus is comprised of eight talented women. Our auditions are open to all singers, men or women.  What is required is an ability to blend, a solid reading ability, and a commitment to new music.

Adesso rehearses in Ridgefield, CT on Tuesday nights from 7:30 to 9:30.

To schedule an audition for our 2012-13 season, please visit our contact page, or call 203-292-5419.

Margaret (Meg) Collins Stoop is an award winning composer whose works have been performed throughout Europe and the United States and include a commission by the “Door Eendracht Sterk” Fanfare Band of Hedel, The Netherlands, to commemorate the band’s one hundred year anniversary.  In March 2011 Meg was guest conductor of the Fairfield County Chorale as they performed the first work by a woman composer ever performed by the chorale, her "Gnosis," for mixed chorus, vibraphone and marimba. In 2007 her song for treble chorus, flute and piano, "maggie and milly and molly and may," was awarded first prize in the Berkshire Children's Chorus Composition Competition.

A recipient of the 2006 Masterworks Prize, "The Shepherd and the Night Sky" for soprano solo, mixed chorus, flute and piano was recorded by members of the Kiev Philharmonic Orchestra and the Chamber Choir Kyiv. In the spring of 2004, the Smith College Chamber Singers performed her piece for women's a cappella chorus, "Hestia's Loom," while on tour in Budapest and Prague. The text for this work was written by an Adesso member, Susan S. Fulljames. In 2002 “Prayer for Peace," for a cappella mixed chorus, was awarded the distinction of honors by the Waging Peace Through Singing Competition.  Meg's string quintet, “Before and After the End,” was a finalist in the 1998 American Romanian Team for the Arts competition, and it was performed in Romania by members of the Black Sea Philharmonic. 

   

Meg began her formal music education at the age of sixteen with a scholarship to the preparatory division of the Mannes College of Music.  In 1989, she graduated from Smith College cum laude, with the special distinction of High Honors in Music for her thesis, On the Horizontal and Vertical in Selected Works by Schoenberg and Webern.  In 1990 and 1991 she resided in Hong Kong, where she studied Chinese flutes and folk music at the Yuet Wah Music School, and western flute privately with Timothy Wilson, of the Hong Kong Philharmonic.  In 1998, Meg received her master's degree in music composition from the Aaron Copland School of Music of the City University of New York, where she studied under Thea Musgrave.

A lifelong chorister, Meg is the founding director of the Adesso Choral Society and she is a member of the Southern Connecticut Camerata.

She teaches flute and piano at Westport Music Center.

Meg has been a member of the Ridgefield Arts Council and is currently president of Connecticut Composers, Inc.