NSU Chamber Choir in concert Tuesday evening | Community Spirit

From David West, Northwestern State University

The Northwestern State University Chamber Choir will present a concert Tuesday, Oct. 23 at 7:30 p.m. in Magale Recital Hall. Admission is free and open to the public. Dr. Burt Allen is the director. Dr. Christine Allen is the accompanist.

The Chamber Choir will perform Ad Dominium Cum Tribularer by Hans Leo Hassler, Drei Quartette Op. 31 by Johannes Brahms, Charm Me Asleep by Henry Leslie, Trois Chansons de Chalres d’Orleans by Claude Debussy and Kyrie by Vytautas Miskinis.

The Choir will also perform To be sung of a summer night on the water by Frederick Delius, The Eyes of All Wait Upon Thee by Jean Berger, three choral settings from Alice in Wonderland by Irving Fine and The Battle of Jericho by Moses Hogan.

“Our program will include a variety of music from the baroque period up to just a few years ago,” said Burt Allen. “This is a very demanding program for our choir, but they are one of the smartest groups I have worked with. The program requires them to sing in four languages, but they have jumped in and learned the music.”

Members of the Chamber Choir are Alexis Beaulieu of Kingwood, Texas, Emma Harrison of Thibodaux, Maria Hefte and Stephanie Raborn of Covington, Geneva McAuliffe of Houston, Leanny Munoz ofAbbeville, Courtney New of New Orleans, Kallie Stephenson of West Monroe, Eilyn Garcia of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, Rebekah Hall of Coushatta, Aisha Jackson of Covington and Hannah Williams, Symone Giles, Hannah Street and Courtney Wilson of Baton Rouge,

Other members of the Chamber Choir are Lauren Richards of Woodworth, Donovan Baker and John Calvin Johnson of Alexandria, Tory Bias of Shreveport, Jonathan Bordelon of Bordelonville, Kyle Boyet of Ringgold, Jordan Derouen and Michael Walter of DeRidder, JohnathanNichols of Natchitoches, John Reynolds Sewell IV, Allen Carpenter, Tyler Herrington and Aaron McConnell of Pineville, Jaime Cisneros of Bastrop, Texas, Denzel Dawson of Houma and Garrett Watson of Cleburne, Texas.

The Chamber Choir, founded in 1987 by Dr. Burt Allen, is a highly auditioned choral ensemble that specializes in performing music suitable for smaller choirs.  Membership is made up of students at Northwestern State, many of whom are music or music education majors, but several have majors in other fields including business, social work, social sciences, and theatre. The Chamber Choir has established an outstanding reputation for choral performance in the gulf coast region.  They have been invited to sing for several professional conferences sponsored by the Louisiana Music Educators and theLouisiana Choral Directors Association. Most of the Chamber Choir was in the NSU International Chorale that toured England in the spring of 2010.

In 1997, they appeared in solo performance in Carnegie Hall in New York City.   The Chamber Choir has also joined forces with the University Concert Choir to form the NSU Symphony Chorus and perform major works for chorus and orchestra including the Brahms Ein Deutsches Requiem, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Poulenc’s Gloria, the Bach Magnificat, the Mozart Requiem, Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, Igor Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, Franz Josef Haydn’s Mass in Time of War, Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and many others.