Choral Showcase Feb. 10 in CPA Concert Hall

Choral voices will be out in full force at 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 10, for the annual Choral Showcase by the School of Music at Illinois State University.  Admission to the concert, in the Center for the Performing Arts Concert Hall, is $6 for the general public, $5 for faculty and staff and $4 for students and senior citizens.  Children 6 and younger are admitted free.

The Showcase will include Concert Choir, Madrigals Singers, Belle Voix (women’s chamber choir), Men's Glee Club, University Women's Choir and Civic Chorale.   Conductors will include director of Choral Activities Karyl Carlson, faculty members Tim Fredstrom and Lauren Saeger, and graduate students Arlene Siagian (who is conducting Civic Chorale this semester) and Erin Stinson.

Molly Nixon plays piano for Men's Glee, and Erin Stinson for University Women.

Madrigals Singers will perform part of a set of madrigals set by contemporary composer Morton Lauridsen.  Concert Choir will sing selections from its just-completed concert tour to the Quad Cities, Geneseo and Rockford.  One Concert Choir selection will be an exciting, rapid-paced song called “Rytmus” by Slovakian composer Ivan Hruovsky. 

Belle Voix will sing a selection by Canadian composer Stephen Hatfield, a song with an exotic sounding melody, accompanied by flute and oboe.  They will also sing a song set with Innuit poetry.

Saeger directs Women's Choir and Encore!, the vocal jazz group. Women's Choir will perform a piece from Gabriel Faure's “Requiem” called “In Paradisum,” arranged for women's voices.  They will also perform a piece by Joan Szymko, “I Lift My Eyes,” which combines a Psalm and a Buddhist meditation.  Encore! will sing a piece Saeger commissioned for them last year called “Dark Out of the Night.”  The work was composed by Peter Eldridge from New York Voices and arranged by Greg Jasperse.  They will also sing a children’s song, “The Muffin Man,” arranged for vocal jazz by David Cross.

Men's Glee Club, directed by Fredstrom, will sing an arrangement of “Scarborough Fair” and “We Sail the Ocean Blue” from “HMS Pinafore” by Gilbert and Sullivan.