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Publication Date

4-8-2018

Year of Release

2018

Note(s)

David Castleberry, Conductor

Mark Smith, pianist

Poems by Langston Hughes

Personnel

Hillary Herold, Cierra James, Neeley Jeffery, Kaylan Johnson, Kristin Johnson, Cayce Murphy, Dominique Sears, Erin Sears, soprano

Shelby Gerlach, Sarah Keiper, Barbara Ladner, Christina MacIver, Talia Rhyne, Shelby Varner, Cadence Weaver, Sidney Wolfe, alto

J.D. Chapman, Bryce Dale, Nicholas Dietrich, Zac Doss, Casey Edwards, Andrew Hupp, Sean Price, tenor

Brandon Cavendish, Daniel George, Owen Guilliams, Tyler Holbrook, Cameron Macklin, Steven Schumann, Colt Sowards, Christian Thomas, Jonathan Young, bass

Notes

Today's Marshall University Chamber Choir concert is part of a year that has embraced an unusually broad swath of the choral landscape. In November, the choir sang in two performances of the Verdi Requiem with the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, an enormous project for any ensemble. Additionally, our singers provided leadership in our annual MU Fall Choral Festival and shared a concert performance with the Marshall University Chorus.

This spring, the Chamber Choir partnered with the Marshall University Wind Symphony, traveling to Parkersburg, WV, and Cincinnati, Ohio, to present workshops and concerts for hundreds of high school students and for MU Alumni chapters in those locales.

Following today's performance, the group will plunge headlong into final preparations for an upcoming April 28th performance of Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, together with the MU Opera Workshop. For an ensemble to reach from Purcell to Verdi in a single year is an ambitious stretch, to say the least.

Extending even farther, though, today's performance represents a fascinating exploration of textual-musical relations, starting with Felix Mendelssohn and concluding with Carly Simon. Of special note is Frederick Piket's little-known work, Sea Charm. These settings of Langston Hughes poems form a series of choral miniatures, drawn from Hughes' work, The Dream Keeper, and evoke images, sounds, and lives touched by the sea. Throughout this work and others on the program musical sonorities, vocal colors, shadings, and articulations are fashioned in response to texts and their varied relationships with music. David Castleberry

Biographies

The Marshall University Chamber Choir is a select choral ensemble whose repertoire spans music of the past five centuries, from renaissance madrigals to newly composed works. Many of the choir's members are preparing for careers in music. Participation is open by audition, however, to students from across the entire campus. The ensemble tours annually. In 2012, the choir made a performance tour through France, including performance for Sunday High Mass at Paris's famed Cathedral de Notre Dame. In 2016, the ensemble presented six concerts during ten glorious days in southern Spain. Most recently, the Chamber Choir joined with the MU Wind Symphony to present concerts and workshops in Parkersburg, WV, and Cincinnati, Ohio. The ensemble has performed with the West Virginia and Huntington Symphony Orchestras and has been heard through radio and television broadcasts, concert tours, and multiple recordings.

Dr. David Castleberry is Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Media and Director of Choral Activities. Under his leadership, the Chamber Choir has been recognized as one of the region's premier choral ensembles through recordings, concert tours, and premieres of new works. In addition to his work at Marshall University, Dr. Castleberry serves as Director of the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra Chorus and as Director of Music at St. John's Episcopal Church in Huntington. He is a past President of the Southern Division of ACDA and has served twice as state President in West Virginia. He served for eight years as a member of the Editorial Board for Choral Journal, where he was Editor of the Sound Recordings review column and where he continues to publish articles and reviews.

The Marshall University School of Music presents more than a hundred concerts each year on campus, in addition to tours and festivals, and features a wide range of performing ensembles. Together with the School of Art and Design, Theatre, and the W. Page Pitt School of Journalism and Mass Communications, the School of Music is part of the College of Arts and Media, a diverse and vibrant community that enriches the lives of our university and region.

Note

Smith Recital Hall

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | Fine Arts | Music | Music Performance

Marshall University Department of Music Presents The Marshall University, Chamber Choir, In Concert

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