Sunday Choir Concert | Photo by Emily Mancuso | The Wright State Guardian
The Collegiate Choir filled the Creative Arts Center with songs honoring victims of hate crimes and the beauty of earth.
Preparation for the concert
The event took place on March 26 at 4 p.m. in the Schuster Hall of the Creative Arts Center.
Practice and preparation began in earnest in January with three classes per week for formal instruction and daily individual preparations.
Newly appointed director of choral studies, Dr. Nathan Nagir, not only arranged the concert and its theme but also earned the trust and respect of choir members.
“I think a lot of us [choir members] would have dropped out if we didn’t have this kind of unity. With our love for music, without the support system a lot of us wouldn’t have pursued this,” Jay Averett, a junior music education major, said.
Every class session included working with collaborative pianist Amy Gray, who has worked with Wright State since 2002 as pianist and instructor.
The director revealed the theme, “Ugliness in Beauty,” only a few days before the choir concert. senior music and laboratory science major Samantha Leal explained what this theme truly meant.
“The first part is outlining the differences between nature and the ugliness of human people because we talk about how the earth is beautiful. We talk about how nature is pure and beautiful, and then we talk about some ugly things that have happened in human history, especially American history, like one of the songs referencing slavery,” Leal said.
The concert
Dr. Nagir welcomed audience members at the start, honoring those who came to support friends and family and the vocal performance faculty that made the concert possible.
Beginning shortly after 4 p.m., choir members stood in the aisles between the audience rows for the choirs’ first song, Frank Ticheli’s “Earth Song,” before moving to the stage.
The choir also performed works by composers Rheinberger, Gibbs, Lauridsen, Valverde, Whitacre and Runestad.
The first section of the program had a traditional and almost ethereal tone. The latter half of the program mainly consisted of selections from “Considering Matthew Shepard” by Craig Hella Johnson.
The suite of music honors Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay man who died as a result of a hate crime. Interspersed within the suite were choir members speaking recitations that tell the story of Shepard’s life and death.
“On October 6, 1998, this University of Wyoming student, whom his mother and father called Matt, was kidnapped, beaten and left to die, in what became an infamous act of brutality and one of America’s most notorious hate crimes,” a selection from the first recitation reads.
Composed of approximately 20 soprano, tenor, alto and bass voices, choir members reflected on the challenge of performing such works, especially with such a small choir.
“We’re basically performing music that should have a choir of 100 or at least 50, but it really shows that everybody, in collegiate [choir] has been working so hard, and everybody who’s been working in treble and tenor and bass chorus have also been working so hard to basically do the work of at least two or three voices,” sophomore vocal performance major Ellie Schwarzman said.
The later half was also more instrument-based with additions of violin, viola, cello, bass, clarinet, guitar and percussion.
The concert concluded with “Let My Love Be Heart” by Jake Runestad and ended at approximately 5:30 p.m. to a standing ovation from the whole audience.
