MOUNT VERNON — Music will fill the Hilltop this weekend during spring concerts by the Cornell College Orchestra and Wind Ensemble at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 12, and the Cornell Concert Choir and Chamber Singers at 3 p.m. Sunday, April 14. Both concerts are in King Chapel and admission is free.
The Orchestra, directed by associate professor of music Martin Hearne, will perform Giuseppe Verdi’s Overture to “La Forza del Destino” (“The Force of Destiny”) and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 in C Major.
The Wind Ensemble, also directed by Hearne, will perform Robert Palmer’s “Overture on a Southern Hymn,” based on the opening phrase of one of the most popular Southern folk hymn tunes, “Wondrous Love”; and William Schuman’s “Chester,” based on a song composed by William Billings at the time of the American Revolution, when it was so popular that it was sung throughout the colonies and became the song of the Revolution. Completing the Wind Ensemble program will be Vincent Persichetti’s Divertimento for Band, Op. 42, and Pierre Leeman’s “Marches des Parachutistes Belges,” which he wrote in 1945 after a dinner with Belgian paratroopers.
The choirs, directed by assistant professor of music Lisa Hearne and accompanied by pianist Lee Nguyen, will perform the American spirituals “Soon I Will Be Done” and “Give Me Jesus,” as well as the Harry Belafonte calypso standard “Turn the World Around.”
The Chamber Singers will present two French songs by opera composer Jules Massenet, a Hebrew motet from the Renaissance era and a movement, sung in Polish, from Karol Szymanowski’s “Stabat Mater,” which is a text about the suffering of Mary as she observes the crucifixion of Jesus. The latter will feature soloists Camellia Watkins, a senior from Omaha, Neb., and Mary Dix, a freshman from Eldridge. Other Chamber Singers selections are light-hearted madrigals, “Fair Phyllis” by John Farmer and “The Counterpoint of the Animals.”
The Concert Choir’s program features “Paratum cor ejus,” a motet by Antonio Vivaldi, and “Wedding Cantata,” a major work by American composer Daniel Pinkham based on the Biblical love poetry from the Song of Solomon.
The concert will close with the patriotic hymn “America the Beautiful” in remembrance of the families and victims of Sept. 11.