The Allegheny College Choral Ensembles, featuring more than 50 students and 35 community members under the direction of Professor James Niblock, will present their annual spring concert on Saturday, April 14, at 3:15 p.m. in Shafer Auditorium. The concert is free and open to the public.
The Chorus Choir will open the concert with a movement from Vivaldi’s Gloria: “Domine Fili Unigenite.” They will also feature Richard Hundley’s “Come Ready and See Me,” an arrangement adapted from Hundley’s well-known composition for solo voice and piano.
Chamber Choir will continue with “In Pace In Idipsum” by Thomas Tallis, which has three sections of polyphony separated by two sections of plainsong. Carol Niblock will then direct “She Dwelt Among Untrodden Ways” by Albert Lee Carr, and James Niblock will join in the bass section. The piece is a musical setting of the William Wordsworth poem.
Women’s Ensemble will close the first half of the program with a piece by Allegheny alumnus Professor Jeffery L. Webb ’98, “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.” Webb is director of Choral Activities at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, and last summer joined the Chamber Choir on its tour to New Zealand.
After intermission, the Men’s Ensemble will feature two Irish pieces, beginning with “Down by the Salley Gardens,” a traditional folk tune. Following Matthew Harris’ “A Red, Red Rose,” they will complete their set with “Whup! Jamboree,” a sea shanty by Alice Parker and Robert Shaw.
The College Choir will perform “Choose Something Like a Star” by Randall Thompson, the final movement of his composition “Frostiana.” Thompson held conducting residencies at Allegheny twice in the 1970s during W.S. Wright North’s tenure as choral director. They will also present “The Ghost of Molly Maguire” by Gene Glickman, a piece about the Molly Maguires, a 19th century Irish labor activist group that later had a presence in eastern Pennsylvania.
As a finale, all five choirs will combine to perform a setting of the Londonderry Air, “Danny Boy.” They will close the concert with a famous South African song, the unofficial national anthem, “Tshotsholoza,” arranged by Jeffery L. Ames.
Professor Emeritus Ward Jamison and Kevin Dill will accompany the choirs on piano. All current members and alumni of the choirs are invited to the stairwell at the end of the concert for the traditional singing of the “Nunc Dimittis” and “Alma Mater Beatissima.”