UWindsor Singers Bring Sounds of Spring

 

 

“One, two! One, two! And through and through! The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head, he went galumphing back!” – Jabberwocky

 

More than 30 voices rose in the Assumption Church auditorium Wednesday night during the University Singers’ Spring Choral Celebration Concert. There, a small audience was treated to a selection of choral music, including Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem, to a musical adaptation of Lewis Carrol’s Jabberwocky and Cy Coleman’s Rhythm of Life.

 

The University Singers are an ensemble group associated with the School of Music at the University of Windsor. It is a graded ensemble open to all students at the university, worth a half credit per semester.

 

“It’s amazing to get up and sing. You emotionally bond with the people you sing with. It’s such a gift to be able to work with so many talented people twice a week,” said Madeline Kennedy, a first year acting student at the University of Windsor. Kennedy said she has enjoyed singing in a choir her whole life and took the opportunity to join the University Singers as an extracurricular activity.

 

“We did a concert for Christmas and a couple weeks ago we did Voices of Light, the aria for Joan of Arc,” Kennedy said.

 

The University Singers was one of several local musical groups who contributed live music to the recent showing of Carl Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc, or Joan of Arc, on March 28. This allowed only two weeks for the University Singers to prepare for Wednesday’s performance.

 

“I only took over the choir halfway through the semester,” said Richard Householder, professor emeritus at the University of Windsor. “They had another conductor and she found it necessary to go back to Toronto, so I took over in mid-stream, as it were.

 

“And we had not one but two major performances to do in that time. So, we sang with the symphony [for Joan of Arc] two weeks ago and then we had to learn this program. And of course we spent a lot of the time on the symphony’s repertoire.”

 

The Singers’ energetic performance garnered applause after each piece. They opened with Fauré’s Requiem OP.48, supported by a violin, piano, and organ throughout. Once this segment was complete the audience was treated to a selection of unrelated music, beginning with Healey Williams’ hymn Rise Up, My Love and leading up to the Jabberwocky and Rhythm of Life.

 

“They did better tonight in the performance of all of those pieces than they did in the rehearsals, which after all is the goal of musicians. They want to do better in the concert than they did in rehearsals.” said Householder.
Wednesday’s concert was the final performance by the University Singers for this year. Next year the group will be led by a different conductor who will be selected by the end of the summer.