Choral Society Plans Gala Concert April 18
As a signature event of its 50th anniversary year celebration, the Rockbridge Choral Society will present a gala concert and reception on Friday, April 18, at 7 p.m. in Wilson Concert Hall, at the Lenfest Center for the Performing Arts at Washington and Lee University.
In this retrospective concert, celebrating 50 years of the Rockbridge Chorus and 25 years of the Rockbridge Youth Chorale, all three of the Society’s performing groups – the Chorus, the Youth Chorale, and the Rockbridge Chamber Singers – will share the stage for an evening looking back across decades of song.
In a program of music drawn from the organization’s rich history, singers and their artistic directors will welcome back former conductors and guest singers and keyboard collaborators from years past. Joining the Rockbridge Chorus’s artistic director William McCorkle, and associate director, Scott Williamson, will be the Chorus’ founding director, Gordon Spice.
Lacey Lynch, artistic director of the Youth Chorale, and director of the Youth Chorus, and Katelyn Roll, director of the Children’s Chorus, will welcome the Youth Chorale’s founding director, Melanie Griffis.
Duo-pianists Timothy Gaylard and Joshua Harvey will provide instrumental accompaniment, along with Anna Billias, longtime collaborative pianist for the Youth Chorale (and a former Children’s Chorus director), and pianist Daniel Brinson.
Singing with the Chorus will be a constellation of guest soloists, including longtime collaborators soprano Christine Fairfield, mezzo-sopranos Barbara Hollinshead and Christine Schadeberg, tenors Scott Williamson and Robert Petillo, and bass-baritone Keith Spencer, as well as other vocalists who have come to work with the Chorus in recent years, tenor Adam Williams, baritone Charles Blueweiss, and soprano Asherah Capellaro.
Said McCorkle, “It has been a memorable and delightful task to construct this program, in which we sample a rich variety of pieces from the different eras of our organization’s history. Planning this event has made us aware of just how much music, and how many ambitious undertakings have marked our evolution.”
Repertoire from the early Chorus years will be represented by Randall Thompson’s “The Road Not Taken,” from his famous “Frostiana: choruses on words by Robert Frost,” and “Linden Lea,” a folk-like melody by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
As a “tip of the hat” to the Chorus’ long and cherished tradition in the annual December Holiday Concert, the singers will offer “Ave Maria” by Franz Biebl; William McCorkle’s “O Little Love,” and Bob Chilcott’s arrangement of the Christmas spiritual “Rise Up, Shepherds.”
For their portion of the program, the singers of the Rockbridge Youth Chorale will reprise a few pieces from their recent Spring Concert. Under the baton of RYC founder Griffis, the adult Chorus will join the young singers in the famous chorus “Speed Your Journey” (“Va pensiero”) from Verdi’s opera “Nabucco,” which was a highlight of an RYC opera program more than 20 years ago.
The Rockbridge Chamber Singers, a smaller ensemble of singers, who offer almost annually a concert of their own, and who participate often as a semi-chorus in major choral works, will sing Charles Villiers Stanford’s “The Blue Bird,” and, joined by guest soloists, selections from the “Liebeslieder Waltzes” of Johannes Brahms.
The remainder of the Chorus’ repertoire for the gala will pay homage to the last quarter-century, when generous support from The Friends of the Rockbridge Choral Society (founded in 1999), has made it possible for the Chorus to perform major choral works involving orchestra and soloists. A small sampling of more than 25 such remarkable undertakings will include small extracts from Mendelssohn’s ‘‘Elijah,” Handel’s “Messiah,” Poulenc’s “Gloria,” and Bach’s “Mass in B Minor,” as well as Bizet’s “Carmen” and Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance.” As a nod to the group’s long history of “pops” concerts, the program will include Sondheim’s “Our Time.”
The longevity and continuing success of the Choral Society and its component ensembles, said McCorkle, is proof of the dedication and hard work of many people to further the group’s mission: to bring to local singers and audiences the opportunity to experience outstanding choral music in the Rockbridge area.
Tickets for the gala concert, which includes a dessert reception, are $50, and can be purchased on the RCS website: rcs.org.
Proceeds from the gala support go to support the conductors, accompanists, professional soloists, and youth programming that would otherwise be out of reach for a volunteer community chorus, said McCorkle.
Said RCS Board President Bronwen Boswell: “I hope all of our friends will come out to celebrate 50 years of music in the community, to be with us as we start the next chapter.’
