Eastern choir groups to perform

Abbey Whittington, Staff Reporter

To celebrate Valentine’s Day, Eastern’s Choral Ensemble will be performing this weekend on Feb. 21 at 4 p.m. in the Dvorak Concert Hall of the  Doudna Fine Arts Center.

The event will be featuring three different ensembles: the University Mixed Chorus, Concert Choir, and Camerata Singers. The concert will also be featuring special guests Ty Tuttle, Tyler Harrand, and Zhangda Wu.

The University Mixed Chorus will be directed by Timothy Renner and will perform the contemporary piece “If Music Be the Food of Love” by David Dichau and “A Shakespeare Trilogy” by Michael Larkin.

This chorus is a mixture of voices that study and perform musical literature from the medieval times, the renaissance, and baroque classics. This group has also performed the work of Oratorio alongside the Eastern Symphony Orchestra and the Eastern Symphony Chamber Orchestra.

The Camerata Singers and the Concert Choir will be directed by Richard Robert Rossi, the director of orchestral and choral activities . The Camerata Singers will start off the show with Thomas Morley’s “Now is the Month of Maying” and “April is In My Mistress’ Face”, as well as Claudio Monteverdi’s “Menter’io Mirava Fiso” and “O Primavera.”

The singers who are a part of the choral ensemble were selected to perform the works madrigals and other choral literature from before the year 1750. The Camerata singers often perform alongside lighter instruments, and have played a variety of a cappella music

For the Concert Choir there will be performances of Emma Lou Diemer’s “Madrigals Three”, Kevin A. Memley’s “O My Love’s Like a Red, Red Rose,” and a traditional folk tune arranged by Robert E. Frazier called “Black is the Color.”

An auditioned group of 35 to 45 voices, the Concert Choir performs a variety of short to medium-length choral compositions that were created by popular composers. These performances come from composers who made the classics to more contemporary ones.

Conducting alongside the directors for the event will be Rebecca Carmack and Michael-Brandon Morales, who are both graduate students in the music department.

Carmack is in her second year of grad school studying choral and orchestral conducting, and Morales is in his first year of grad school studying choral conducting. Both students are learning under Dr. Rossi’s wing.

Tickets can be purchased online or at the Doudna Fine Arts Center’s Box Office which will be open for tickets an hour before the show.

General admission is $12, seniors and faculty is $10, and student is $5.

 

Rebecca Carmack and Michael-Brandon Morales could not be reached for comment.

Abbey Whittington can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].