This Sunday, November 16th, UConn Choirs will be performing in concert at the Storrs Congregational Church. The concert will showcase Women’s Choir, Chamber Singers, and Collegiate Singers and feature a wide variety of music. Selections include Mass Ordinary Movements—apropos for the concert’s venue—such as Faure’s Messe Basse (“Low Mass”) and Benjamin Britten’s Missa Brevis. Among the sacred songs are also Haydn’s Abendlied zu Gott, a sweet setting of a simple prayer for chorus and piano, and William Dawson’s arrangement of Ain’a That Good News, a powerful African-American Spiritual. The concert also features secular works, such as El Grillo (“The Cricket”), which is one of Josquin des Prez’s few secular compositions.
Sure on this Shining Night and Love Lost are both song versions of poems; Sure on this Shining Night takes the work of James Agee and sets it to music, while Love Lost uses four short, satirical love poems as source material. Lay a Garland and I Have Had Singing are both somber pieces, Lay a Garland being an eight part madrigal describing the funeral of a young maiden, and I Have Had Singing providing a look into the dreams of the deceased who declares, “I have had pleasure enough, I have had singing.” I Have Had Singing is a miniature lasting less than two minutes and As Torrents in Summer is a comparably short piece, as it is the chorus to a much larger work, The Saga of St. Olaf. One of the best known selections of the evening is Jerome Kern’s The Way You Look Tonight, but the a cappella version being performed with rich harmonies stands in stark contrast to the original. One of the best known composers of the evening is Johannes Brahms, but though he is famous for his requiem, his other choral works such as Warum ist das Licht gegeben Müuhsehligen are equally sublime. Finally, the concert concludes with a fun and unique piece, Voice Dance, which uses sung nonsense scat syllables to create a joyful sound.
Conductors for this concert include Dr. Jamie Spillane – Director of Choral Studies, and graduate conducting students: Jun Lee, Jillian Nichoson-Dicks, and Matt Travis. It will be held at 3pm on Sunday, November 16th at the Storrs Congregational Church on North Eagleville Road, Storrs, CT.
For more information, contact: Kirk Matson at Kirk.Matson@uconn.edu