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The choirs will hold their annual Winter Concert and Carol-Sing 8 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday at the Williams Center for the Arts.
Nina Gilbert, director of choral activities, will lead the 60-voice Concert Choir, 24-voice Madrigal Singers, and Faculty-Staff Vocal Chamber Ensemble. Marka Young will direct the orchestra.
The Brass Ensemble, directed by Ken Brader, will give a pre-concert performance 7:15 p.m. Saturday.
The free concerts are sponsored by the music department.
“We have about a dozen international students in the choir this year, and they lend a real tapestry quality to our blend,” says Gilbert. “My strategy for a rich vocal tone is to take singers with diverse voices and teach them to listen carefully and match each other’s sounds. The result really shows with this year’s group. Also, we are blessed with a remarkable balance of voices — our sopranos are the strongest they’ve been since I got here four years ago, so we have some pieces that show them off.”
The concert features the debut of “Carol of the Carols,” a piece Gilbert arranged and assembled that is composed of 61 quotes from 46 well known carols in two minutes and 17 seconds. It includes brief audience participation.
The choir learned another song on the program, “Tambur,”a Hungarian cowboy song, during last year’s European concert tour of Vienna, Helsinki, Tallinn, Budapest, and Bratislava. “We didn’t know there were Hungarian cowboys, but this has a heavy square-dance feel to it, and it really is described in Hungarian as a ‘hajdutanz’ — cow-herder’s dance,” says Gilbert.
The men and women are singing works by Bach and Vivaldi, respectively, accompanied by orchestra. Two students are learning to play the harpsichord in the orchestra: Veronica Slaght ’07 will accompany the men when they sing “May God Bless You” by J. S. Bach, and Jeremy Deaner ’04 will accompany the women when they sing “Christe eleison” by Antonio Vivaldi. Slaght and Deaner will also accompany the traditional carol-sing, playing piano duet settings of the carols.
The candlelight processional will feature “Joy in the Gates of Jerusalem,” with the choir improvising rounds based on a short 18th-century line. The program also includes a triple-choir echo piece, “Rorate coeli desuper (Let dew from heaven)” by Jan Campanus Vodnansky. The balcony and auditorium space will be used to create a cathedral-sound quality.
Other concert highlights, with comments by Gilbert:
“Close to You,” a transcription of a rare Frank Sinatra recording from 1943. “We have a soloist who we think sounds like Sinatra — Steve Presciutti ’05 — so this is his big feature solo.We are the only choir in the world with permission to sing this piece. Sinatra recorded it during the musicians’ strike, so he sang with a cappella back-up singers instead of an orchestra.”
“Betelehemu,” by Babatunde Olatunji and Wendell Whalum, a Yoruba carol from Nigeria by way of Morehouse College.“Normally this piece has a drum ensemble accompanying it, but our drummer, David Castelletti ’05, does such interesting things that we are featuring him as a soloist.”
“Sinner Man,” a spiritual.“This piece has several verses, as the sinner man gets progressively deeper into trouble, and we have different soloists on each verse. We think each one sounds progressively more threatening:Marciano DeSouza, Kiira Benzing, Ashley Mahler, Chris Leidy, Alisandra Carnevale, Greg Lapp, Daniela Simova, Sandra Welch, and Christina Morgan. David Castelletti and Tito Anyanwu are drumming on this piece.They’re making up a wonderful drum part.The original score calls for something boring and repetitive, but they’re making up something with more character.”
“Quick! We Have But a Second,” an Irish folk song arrangement by Roy Ringwald, sung by the men.“Our arrangement is from the Fred Waring archives.We are developing a tradition of singing historical pop music, and this Waring piece plus the Sinatra piece are in that tradition.When we get ‘Quick!’ right, it only lasts 12 seconds.”
Three settings of the text “O Magnum Mysterium (What a great mystery).” “It’s a beautiful medieval poem:What a great mystery and wondrous sacrament, that animals were able to watch the birth of Jesus.Originally it was a Gregorian chant, so we are singing the chant.Most recently, it’s been set to music by William Hawley, a New York composer, and we’re singing that setting too.The most famous setting is by Tomas Luis de Victoria, and our Madrigal Singers are singing that.”
“Beati Quorum Via — Blessed are those whose path is whole” by Charles Stanford, sung by the Madrigal Choir. “That piece is deliciously beautiful — the singers divide into six parts, and the notes cascade harmoniously over each other.”