Chamber Singers in Baylor Concert

The Baylor University Chamber Singers will present a concert called “Loss and Love” on Tuesday, November 2, beginning at 7:30 p.m. in the McLean Foyer of Meditation at Armstrong Browning Library. This twenty-voice mixed choir is conducted by Brian A. Schmidt, Associate Professor of Choral Music. The assistant conductor is Erin Schmidt, and the collaborative pianist is Joseph Li, Assistant Professor of Vocal Coaching.
The program will open with the “Kyrie eleison” movement from Spanish Renaissance composer Thomás Luis de Victoria’s Officium Defunctorum. This requiem, dating from 1605, was the composer’s final published work.
Next, the Chamber Singers will perform “Soneto de la noche”) (“Sonnet of the Night”) from contemporary American composer Morten Lauridsen’s Nocturnes from 2005. It is based on a poem of Pablo Neruda.
Roger Ames arranged his Choral Reflections on “Amazing Grace” in 2002, just one year after the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. This work, written for the Westminster Choir College Chapel Choir, is poignantly dedicated to the children of the victims of the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center. According to annotator James Jordan, “May we never forget the hundreds of children whose parents were taken from them on that day. Perhaps it is those children who will pay the heaviest price of this tragedy.”
American composer Eric Whitacre wrote his Five Hebrew Love Songs in 1996 to five poetic works by his future wife, Israeli soprano Hila Plitmann.
Also to be heard are “Spring” and “An Invitation” from Three Children’s Songs, as arranged for unison chorus and piano by English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Closing the program will be Kirby Shaw’s setting of “If I Loved You” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1945 musical Carousel, and then “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?” (from Shakespeare’s Sonnet No. 18) by contemporary Swedish composer Nils Lindberg.
This Chamber Singers concert is free of charge and open to the public.