Vocal preformance provides a stress-relieving concert
Last Sunday, students with CSC’s concert choir filled the Chadron Arts Center with melodic notes. For their finale, the choir sang “The City and the Sea,” an Eric Whitacre cycle based on an enigmatic E.E. Cummings poem. One line repeated “little man in a hurry, full of an important worry.” The students belted out crescendoing harmonies, repeating “little man in a hurry” with hypnotic effect.
With finals just a month away, students may feel like this man. But with collegiate stress weighing on the mind, there’s no better time to immerse the ears with beautiful music. During their hour-long program, the Chadron Community Chorus and CSC Concert Choir sang 11 arrangements, spanning four centuries of musical influence. Conducted by Una Taylor, the Community Chorus is comprised of both students and Chadronites. The Community Chorus preformed first, offering mostly folk songs. In addition to this mutual genre, the songs all shared a melancholic feel. Their plaintive, narrative lyrics spoke to a universal desire, shaped by factors like love, death, and duty. Their fourth piece, composed by David Brunner, epitomized this. Brunner’s piece described a desolate mariner’s longing for the sea. The piece contained thought-provoking comparisons, like describing death as “when the long trick’s over.”
Bridging both of the ensembles’ lineups, the Community Chorus and Concert Choir joined for a song called “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” with Kimberly Murphy on violin and James Margetts on piano. Following the Community Chorus’ theme of longing and distance, this piece told the story of two lovers, brought together and torn apart by military duty. Although set in the colonial period, the piece seemed appropriate for the week preceding Veterans’ Day.
After the Community Chorus, Joel Schreuder introduced the Concert Choir’s set. Thirty-eight musicians strong, CSC’s concert choir always impresses with their vocal performance. They sang intense, interesting music, with a capella accuracy and choral beauty. Their pieces also united under thematic commonalities, but focused on more advanced imagistic and metaphoric language.
If students doubt whether choir performances contain risque material, they need only read the lyrics to “Il bianco e dolce cigno” by Jacob Arcadelt. The title translates to “The White and Sweet Swan,” but the song’s actual subject matter belongs in a PG-13 movie. However, when shrouded in lovely music and metaphor, the choir transports this topic from blue humor to beautifully human. They achieved this in an even higher degree when the choir then performed Kevin Puts’ “If I Were A Swan.” Continuing the previous song’s avian imagery, this piece dove into, as Schreuder described it, “the moment of joining.” Turbulent and exciting, this piece painted an audiological scene of Romantic proportions.
Finally, the Concert Choir ended with Whitacre’s “The City and The Sea” cycle. A complicated leap off choral conventions, Whitacre created pieces crammed with perplexing images and musical twists and turns. At the end of their five-piece finale, the choir left their audience hanging on a note, and let their final phrase, “stop,” resonate through the Arts Center. If you are finding yourself stressed by the impending finals, consider taking the choir’s advice. Don’t be a little man in a hurry. Pause and listen to the music. If you missed the choir concert, the Men’s and Women’s Ensembles perform at 3 p.m. this Sunday in the Arts Center.