MONMOUTH, Ill. — The Monmouth Chorale, Monmouth College’s most advanced and only auditioned choral ensemble, will perform March 13 at 7:30 p.m. in the college’s Dahl Chapel and Auditorium as the final stop on the group’s annual spring concert tour. This year’s tour marks the eighth consecutive year the choir has performed for audiences throughout the United States and abroad.

On March 12, the ensemble will also provide music for the regular service of Faith United Presbyterian Church in Monmouth at 10:30 a.m. The church is located at 200 South Eighth Street. Both the college concert and the church performance are free and open to the public.

The Chorale is a select 46-member choral ensemble made up of undergraduate students from a wide variety of academic disciplines. Other stops on the tour are Kettering, Ohio; Tiffin, Ohio; and Holt, Mich.

According to Chorale director Sarah Graham, who also serves as director of choral activities and vocal studies, the tour performance will include four sets, beginning with music of the Renaissance and early Baroque periods and featuring such composers as Jan Sweelinck, Heinrich Schütz and Felix Mendelssohn.

The second set, which Graham describes as the centerpiece of the concert, will be a 20-minute rendition of Benjamin Britten’s “Rejoice in the Lamb,” a festival cantata featuring organ accompaniment by Ian Moschenross, assistant professor of music at Monmouth College.

Following the cantata, the ensemble will change the pace a bit by featuring a set of what Graham calls love songs. The first is a well-known Brahms piece, “How Sad Flow the Streams.” From Brahams, the Chorale’s literature will shift focus to three 20th-century pieces, including “Contre qui, Rose” from “Chansons des Roses” by Morten Lauridsen and “A Boy and A Girl” and “Water Night,” both by the Eric Whitacre, a contemporary composer.

The Chorale’s final set will feature a collection of some more traditional spiritual choral literature, such as “Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit” by William Dawson, F. Melius Christiansen’s “Beautiful Savior,” Moses Hogan’s arrangement of “I’m Gonna Sing ‘Til the Spirit Moves in My Heart” and Gilbert Martin’s “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” with organ accompaniment again by Moschenross.

Touring during spring break since 1999, the Chorale has visited nearly half the states in the country, performing at such notable venues as the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif., and Atlanta’s Peachtree Presbyterian Church. In the spring of 2005, the ensemble retraced the college’s Presbyterian heritage, performing at historic churches.

The choral tradition at Monmouth College has a long and varied history, dating back to the 1890s. Following a precedent set by instrumental groups such as the mandolin and guitar ensembles, Monmouth’s men’s and women’s glee clubs began touring throughout the Midwest. The tradition continued after the merger of the Monmouth Conservatory of Music with Monmouth College in the 1930s, as choral organizations have represented the college by making annual performance tours throughout the United States and abroad.

In other Monmouth Chorale news, the ensemble will participate in the prestigious American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) Central Region Collegiate Choral Festival on Feb. 25 at Illinois State University’s Center for the Performing Arts Concert Hall. The invitational concert also includes groups from Illinois State, Bradley, Millikin, Concordia, Southern Illinois, DePaul and Illinois Wesleyan.

“To be invited to the festival, colleges and universities submit performance tapes of their choirs, and the top eight chorale groups receive an invitation to the regional choral festival,” said Graham. “Needless to say, this is a very prestigious honor for Monmouth College and for the Chorale since this is the first time we have been invited to perform at the festival.”

Graham said each of the choral groups perform throughout the day, presenting about a 20-minute program. In a celebration of the 250th birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the choirs will join together at 2:30 p.m. for a performance of the composer’s “Ave Verum Corpus.”

Founded in 1959, the American Choral Directors Association is a nonprofit music-education organization whose central purpose is to promote excellence in choral music through performance, composition, publication, research and teaching. In addition, ACDA strives through arts advocacy to elevate choral music’s position in American society. It is divided into seven geographic regions, including the central region of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio.

Released by the Office of College Communications
Barry McNamara, Associate Director of College Communications
Phone: 309-457-2117
Fax: 309-457-2330