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SPRING MUSIC CONCERT SET FOR TUESDAY

SPRING MUSIC CONCERT SET FOR TUESDAY

The Central Wyoming College music department will present a spring concert on Tuesday, April 24 at 7pm in the Robert A. Peck Arts Center Theater. The concert will feature the Collegiate Chorale, under the direction of Sharon Dalton and the Fremont County Band, under the direction of Sarah Trembly. The concert is free and open to the public.

The Collegiate Chorale will perform pieces using a variety of styles and texts. The first selection, The Road Home, is adapted by Stephen Paulus using the tune “Prospect” from the Southern Harmony, a shape note hymn and tune book, compiled by William Walker, first published in 1835. Next on the program is Irving Berlin’s Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, set to the classic text inscribed on the Statue of Liberty from the sonnet “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus.This is followed by a rich setting by Z. Randall Stroope of Sara Teasdale’s beautiful poem, I Am Not Yours.

Clarissa Wykstra, CWC theatre and communication student, will be the featured soloist in Keith Hampton’s spiritual, True Light. The choir will also perform the inspiring music of David C. Dickau’s If Music be the Food of Love, with text by Henry Heveningham, meant to speak to the hearts of music lovers.

The music alone for this program is beautiful. The timeless and meaningful text of these pieces is as relevant now as when it was written a century or more ago and connects us with previous generations. ”

The concert band will perform a Karl King march entitled Invictus, as well as a Folksong Festival medley with folk songs from Ireland, Scotland and Italy. The band’s feature piece will be the entire Lincolnshire Posy suite, a six-movement work for wind band composed by Percy Grainger.

These six movements are short, programmatic pieces that each evoke a memory of the composer. Movements include the lesser known “Sailor Song,” “The Miser and his Man (A Local Tragedy)” and “Lord Melbourne (War Song),” as well as well-known movements “The Brisk Young Sailer,” the “Lost Lady Found” and “Rufford Park Poachers.” Grangier was one of the first composer to write specifically for wind band and the many colors and textures of the wind instruments.

“It is a pleasure to be able to perform such a classic wind band piece,” Trembly said. “This concert has a great variety of music from both the choir and band and will be very enjoyable.”

The chorale and band will end the concert with a combined performance of Homeland, arranged by Z Randall Stroope, based on the theme from the middle section of the Jupiter movement from the orchestral suite The Planets, by English composer Gustav Holst. Holst adapted the theme to fit the patriotic poem “I Vow to Thee My Country” by Cecil Spring Rice in 1921.The tune appeared later as a hymn tune widely known as “Thaxted.”