"Shout for Joy!" During Lebanon Valley College's Concert Choir 75th Spring Tour

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LVC Concert Choir, with Director Mark Mecham in front, center

ANNVILLE, PA (03/17/2011)(readMedia)-- The Lebanon Valley College Concert Choir is celebrating its 75th anniversary spring tour in 2011 with a program titled Shout for Joy! The tour includes stops in Huntersville, NC on Mar. 31, New Cumberland, Pa. on Apr. 1, Pottsville, Pa. on Apr. 2, and Paoli, Pa. on Apr. 3, as well as a home concert in Annville during the 75§20 Choral Jubilee on May 1.

All concerts are open to the public, admission is free, and a free-will offering will be taken to benefit the music ministry.

The tour program features three great music traditions: American hymnody, with its roots in the Renaissance motet; the music of Scandinavia, as 50 members of the choir will be touring Norway and Denmark in May; and the commissioning of contemporary choral works looking toward the future.

Musical highlights include two late-Renaissance motets by Palestrina, Sicut cervus and Nigra sum, sed formosa. Both songs are based on biblical text. Lamb of God, a 1531 German chorale setting by Nicolaus Decius and arranged by F. Melius Christiansen, founder of the St. Olaf Choir tradition, will conclude a group of early works.

American hymnody is further explored in two settings by William Billings, Thomas-Town and Dedham, works from the Revolutionary War period. Additional hymnody works include I Will Arise, God Is Seen, and Hark, I Hear the Harps Eternal arranged by Alice Parker, as well as a tune from the American Sacred Harp tradition, Welcome, Ev'ry Guest. Traditional hymn settings are presented in works by early Mormon Tabernacle Choir director, Evan Stephens' Let the Mountains Shout for Joy, which was first recorded by the choir 100 years ago, and by current MTC director, Mack Wilberg's arrangement of the familiar folk hymn, Come, thou fount of every blessing, for mixed choir and organ. The Lord is my Shepherd, a new setting of Psalm 23 for choir and piano, by Robert C. Lau, a former chair of the College's department of music, will conclude this section of the program.

Scandinavian music will be represented by composers Edvard Grieg and Egil Hovland, and a Barne Slögedal setting of the eighth-century monk Notker's text, "Media vita," in a composition entitled Antiphona de Morte. Grieg's Ave Maris Stella will be featured, as will Hovland's paraphrase of John 1, The Glory of the Father, and his mini-oratorio entitled Saul, a contemporary representation of Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus adapted from Acts 8 and 9.

The next anthems explore different calls for prayer: Pavel Tschesnokoff's Russian masterpiece, O Lord God, followed by Kurt Bestor's The Prayer of the Children, which transitions the program to the great Negro spiritual contributions of Moses Hogan (Hear My Prayer and My Soul's Been Anchored in the Lord), and André Thomas's brilliant composition, Rockin' Jerusalem.

The newly commissioned, 75th anniversary anthem is Lord of All Being by California composer and music publisher Everett Reed. It is a beautiful setting of a meditative text by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., which was first published in the Atlantic Monthly in December 1859. It captures the spirit of the founding of Lebanon Valley College, which observes its sesquicentennial year in 2016. Reed will attend the home concert performance-part of the 75§20 Choral Jubilee weekend-and will present a composition and music business master class on Friday, April 29 in connection with his visit.

At the 75§20 Choral Jubilee on Sunday, May 1, the Concert Choir will be joined by a mass alumni choir, which will sing three movements from Mozart's Requiem, with Dr. Shelly Moorman-Stahlman at the organ, two anthems by Billings, the Hallelujah Chorus, with Charles Grove '13 on organ, Lutkin's traditional benediction, The Lord Bless You and Keep You, and LVC's Alma Mater.

Choir touring by LVC choral groups was intermittent until the crash of 1929, when it came to an abrupt halt. In 1936, at the height of the depression, Professor Edward P. Rutledge revived the tour by what was then called the Glee Club. The late Paul G. Fisher '47 records that the first extended tour to Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Hagerstown, Shippensburg, and other towns in southern Pennsylvania, was made between February 4–11, 1938. During those 75 years, there have been four directors: Professor Rutledge, Dr. James M. Thurmond, Dr. Pierce A. Getz, and current director, Dr. Mark L. Mecham.

Shout for Joy! Tour Stops:

Thursday, March 31, 2011, 7 p.m.

Huntersville United Methodist Church

14005 Stumptown Road

Huntersville, NC 28078

Friday, April 1, 2011, 7 p.m.

Baughman Memorial United Methodist Church

Third & Bridge Streets

New Cumberland, Pa. 17070

The Deborah Vowler Posner Concert Series

Saturday, April 2, 2011, 7 p.m.

First United Methodist Church-Pottsville

330 W. Main Street

Pottsville, Pa. 17901

Sunday, April 3, 2011, 3 p.m.

Church of the Good Samaritan

212 W. Lancaster Avenue

Paoli, Pa. 19301

Sunday, May 1, 2011, 3 p.m.

75§20 Choral Jubilee

Lebanon Valley College Miller Chapel

101 N. College Ave.

Annville, Pa. 17003