Music Team
Collaborative Pianist
Mark Feldhusen joined Commonwealth Chorale as rehearsal pianist in 2009. He is also accompanist at Temple Israel in Boston, Temple Beth Elohim in Wellesley, Rivers School Conservatory, and Perkins School for the Blind. Praised for his “sensitive accompaniment” (The Arts Fuse, 3/14/12), Mr. Feldhusen has also appeared in concert with the Heritage Chorale as well as numerous concerts of secular and sacred Jewish music. He is active in the Boston chamber music scene and annually attends the Bennington Chamber Music Conference. He has studied with Darryl Rosenberg and Kevin McGinty. A talented sight-reader and quick study, he has also been known to step out of the audience, take the place of an indisposed pianist, and save middle school performances of The Pajama Game.
Commonwealth Chorale thanks the Izolde Lamont Fund for making this position possible.
Section Leaders
Maria Whitcomb, Soprano
Hailing from New York State’s Catskill Mountain Region, Maria Whitcomb is new to Boston’s rich musical community. A Commonwealth Chorale section leader since 2024, she also performs with Lilith Vocal Ensemble and MetroWest Chamber Players and enjoys a close collaboration with local composer Bruno Faria. The title role in his 2019 chamber opera Voices Followed: The Illumination of Joan of Arc was written especially for her, and he later composed the Christina Rossetti song cycle, Sing-Song in memory of her late father, Benjamin Whitcomb III. This work received its world premiere in a sold-out recital at the Boston Athenaeum in December 2023. The latter part of Maria’s 2023-2024 season was spent in preparation to cover Susanna in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro with the Hudson Valley Voice Festival. In the 2022-2023 season, she performed two works by Gian Carlo Menotti; the title role in Amahl and the Night Visitors, (Music On Site, Inc.) and Laetitia in The Old Maid and the Thief (Queens Summer Vocal Institute).
Maria studied with Janet Brown at Syracuse University, where her operatic credits included Adele (Die Fledermaus), Belinda (Dido and Aeneas), and Zerlina (Don Giovanni). She completed her postgraduate work in opera with Jayne West at Longy School of Music of Bard College and currently studies with Mark Lee in Arlington, MA.
Laura Beth Couch, Mezzo-Soprano
Laura Beth Couch, lauded by The Boston Musical Intelligencer for singing with “deep pathos” and “radiant affection,” is a mezzo-soprano living in Boston. Laura is thrilled to have been Commonwealth Chorale's Alto section leader and soloist since 2022. She earned her Performance Diploma from Boston University where she performed as Julia Child in Bon Appétit, Dorothée in Cendrillon, Alice 2 in Alice Tierney, and Friedrich Bhaer in Little Women. Other favorite roles include Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd (Opera51), Bradamante in Alcina (MassOpera), Mrs. Phagan in Parade (Lowell House Opera), Tisbe in La Cenerentola, La Ciesca in Gianni Schicchi, and Babette in Beauty and the Beast (Bay View Music Festival). Laura has been a soloist for Bach’s Magnificat, Bononcini’s Stabat Mater, Handel’s Messiah, Vivaldi’s Gloria, Mozart’s Coronation Mass, and Marianna Martines’s Dixit Dominus. A dedicated music teacher of over 10 years, she earned her M.M. in Voice Performance from Shenandoah University and her B.M. in Music Education from Rutgers University.
Matthew McGinnis, Tenor
Matthew McGinnis is delighted to be in his second season with the Commonwealth Chorale as a section leader! He is a music teacher by day and maintains an active performing calendar in classical music and musical theatre. He enjoys performing oratorio, musicals, and choral music, and has been performing professionally for almost ten years. He has performed with Zenith Ensemble and around New England as a soloist and choral singer. His performances as a soloist include Schubert’s Mass in G, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Handel’s Messiah, and Mozart’s Requiem. Outside of New England, he has performed a number of times with the St. Andrews Arts Council in New Brunswick, Canada as well as serving as a soloist and choral singer on tour in the Canadian Maritime region. When Matthew is not singing or teaching, he can often be found cooking and baking in his kitchen.
William Farrell, Baritone
William Farrell has been singing with Commonwealth Chorale a section leader since 2016, and he is excited to be joining the group for another season. Since moving to the Greater Boston area in fall 2015, he has performed with various professional groups, including The Boston Camerata, The Tanglewood Festival Chorus for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops, Capella Nova Mundi, Canto Armonico, and St. Paul's Choir School. In 2019, he had the unique opportunity to perform at the activation Bleed for the Throne by HBO, Game of Thrones, and the American Red Cross at SXSW.
William graduated with a Master of Music in Early Music from the Longy School of Music in 2017. He loves to explore all types of historical performance, especially Renaissance polyphony and Baroque opera. Recently he has been on an endeavor with a few other professional singers to present rarely performed or unperformed Franco-Flemish polyphonic choral settings—one on a part—for St. Clements Eucharistic Shrine. They approach settings with liturgically appropriate texts in an attempt to survey a large portion of the repertoire that gets ignored. Outside of singing, William is an avid cyclist and loves to take any opportunity to return to New Hampshire where he can cycle on the beautiful mountain roads.