Choral concert set for Sunday

The Cornell College Concert Choir will perform “Five Hebrew Love Songs” and other pieces on Sunday, April 25 at 3 p.m. in King Chapel on Cornell’s campus.

The concert, which is free and open to the public, is the group’s major performance for the semester.

The Concert Choir’s major work this semester is Eric Whitacre’s Five Hebrew Love Songs, composed on texts by his wife Hila Plitmann.  These will be sung in Hebrew and accompanied by a string quartet that includes Cornell faculty James Ellis, Miera Kim, and Michelle Bennett.

The choir will also perform a work for spoken chorus “Geographical Fugue” by Ernst Toch; an opera chorus “Neighbors Chorus” from a comic opera by Jacques Offenbach;  a sacred psalm by Rene Clausen, conductor of the Concordia Choir in Moorhead Minnesota; a spiritual by Moses Hogan “My Soul’s Been Anchored” featuring soloists Jonathan Nadolny and Alexander LeFebvre.

Chamber Singers will open the concert with a program that includes Maurice Ravel’s “Trois Chansons,” featuring senior voice major Becca Swartz; a major work by Randall Thompson, “Fare Well”; Claudio Monteverdi’s madrigal “Si ch’io vorrei morire;” “Bridge Over Trouble Water” with soloists Alexander LeFebvre and Becca Swartz; “Jamaican Market Place” by Larrow Farrow, featuring percussion rhythm section.  Other soloists include Paul Worrell and Josh Atcher.  Other selections include works by Brahms, Lotti, Orban, and Vaughan Williams.

The students will perform in six different languages on this concert, and represent a wide cross-section of cultures and historical periods.

Accompanist for the choirs is Joyce Strabala of the Cornell piano faculty, and the conductor is Dr. Lisa Hearne.