Collegiate Singers in Concert April 30

The annual spring concert performed by the Fairmont State University Collegiate Singers takes place on Wednesday, April 30, at 8 p.m. in the Turley Center Ballroom.

The concert will be conducted by Jeffrey Poland, FSU Director of Choral Activities, and accompanied by pianist John Morrison. Admission is free and open to the public.

The program opens with an eclectic mass, an innovation of the 20th century, in which the musical settings of the traditional mass text are selected from different composers. For this performance, the composers are Palestrina, Haydn, Schubert, Bach and Mozart. The musical influence is strongly Austro-German with those composers, but the musical style encompasses the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods. The "Gloria" and "Agnus Dei" movements include passages for solo quartet to be performed by Jennifer Stafford, soprano; Hillary Barlow, alto; Bryant Riffle, tenor; and Jason Noland, bass.

Songs of love and affection are featured in the next set, ranging from Irish folksong to contemporary American settings of poetry by Robert Burns and e.e. cummings. The popular song "Danny Boy" is performed as an unaccompanied ballad along with David Dickau's lovely music for "O, My Luve' Like A Red, Red Rose." Dickau, a composer and choral conductor at Minnesota State University, is represented again by his 2005 work "in time of daffodils." Another university composer, Dan Forrest of Bob Jones University, has published a beautiful new piece in 2008 titled "You Are the Music," which will be performed with piano and French horn accompaniment.

The concert concludes with spirituals and music of global awareness. The Collegiate Singers present a perennial favorite by William Dawson, "Soon-Ah Will Be Done," followed by two pieces with African drums. In the slave song "Keep Your Lamps," the text is based on the parable told by Jesus about the wise and foolish virgins. In the closing number, the choir sings the African text: "It takes a whole village to raise our children, it takes a whole village to raise one child." This concept was the basis of Hillary Clinton's book published in 1996. The choral arrangement employs traditional African chant, drumming, and a tenor solo by Marc Cornes.