The Keene State College concert choir ended its year with a performance celebrating peace.
The show started off with a speech from Assistant Professor Dr. Daniel Carberg who announced that KSC’s music program is the only liberal arts college program in New England to be nationally accredited.
“Have Ye Not Known?” was the opening song. The song started off with a strong bass and tenor leads then blended in harmony with sopranos and altos to end the opening number with “Ye Shall Have a Song.”
Next the choir sang “Dona Nobis Pacem” by composer Johan Sebastian Bach. For the third song, Director Diane Cushing took a moment to share a personal memory with the audience. The song “O Morn Of Beauty” is from Finland. Cushing, who also hails from Finland, said the song was about hope.
Following that performance the audience turned around and had their backs faced toward the audience and spun around to sing Walt Whitman’s “Song at Sunset.”
The next song was not only a fan favorite but a favorite of KSC senior and student conductor Amanda
Angela Scionti / Equinox Staff
Williams. Williams got to student conduct two songs during the concert including “ Sure on this Shining Night” and a song from the popular animated film “Frozen.”
“It [student conducting] was a really great experience, I’m a music education student and our junior year we [students] take conducting one and conducting two. So this semester I took conducting two and if you are taking conducting two or are a first semester senior that’s taking both conducting one and two you are eligible to student conduct,” Williams said.
She continued, “I got to pick both my songs… I picked ‘Sure On This Shining Night’ because I had sung it in high school and it’s just one of my favorites pieces and I’ve really grown to like Morten Lauridsen as a composer,” Williams said.
In regards to the second song she conducted during the concert Williams said, “When I first saw “Frozen” I thought, wow, there is some great music in the movie, but I feel like everyone is going to obsess over “Let It Go” and all the other stuff, but the choral music is gorgeous from “Frozen.” So I decided I really wanted to do the choral music from it.”
Overall Williams said she enjoyed conducting.
“I never really knew how I felt about conducting because I had never done it before but after conducting one I really enjoyed it and was really happy when Diane asked me to student conduct,” Williams said.
Along with Williams another KSC senior Kenny Ballou student conducted “The Water is Wide” by composer Mark Hayes.
While all the other songs were accompanied by piano, “Ya Ba Bom” was accompanied by piano and drums, also played by Ballou.
The next song, “Hallelujah”, featured two soloists. A male solo sung by Pat Homer and a female solo sung by first-year Emma Nelson.
Nelson explained that she had to audition for the solo and was nervous but excited to perform. Overall Nelson said, “ I think we did really well, it was iffy during practices but everyone really put in their time and share [of work] so by concert time it was really good.”
Audience member Deb Conti agreed and said the concert was “beautiful.”
“I have gone to many state shows and these shows are at the same level. They are all so talented,” Conti said.
The concert closed with the “Frozen” number conducted by Williams and “A Gaelic Blessing” by composer John Rutter.
Kendall Pope can be contacted at kpope@kscequinox.com
