Collegiate Choir To Follow Tour With Home Concert

March 10, 2003

The Collegiate Choir from Illinois Wesleyan University will present a concert at St. John’s Lutheran Church, 1617 E. Emerson, Bloomington, at 8 p.m. Tuesday, March 25.

This concert will conclude the choir’s 2003 tour. The tour itinerary includes seven performances in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut and Washington, D.C.

The Illinois Wesleyan University Collegiate Choir has established a long history of excellence through its on-campus performances, annual tours and recordings. The choir also sponsors the IWU Choral Commission Series, which in its 51-year history has added many significant works to the choral repertoire and resulted in a number of important world premieres at Illinois Wesleyan University.

The 51-voice choir is composed of student musicians representing the school of music and other areas of the university, and is dedicated to the performance of the finest sacred and secular choral music of the past five centuries. Students in the choir are selected by audition and maintain a rigorous rehearsal schedule in preparation for their concert tour and other engagements throughout the year.

The choir is under the direction of Dr. J. Scott Ferguson, director of choral activities at Illinois Wesleyan University. Under his direction, choral ensembles have received critical acclaim for their “exquisite discipline, enthusiastic singing and total responsiveness,” and for being “…one unit of lovely responsive layered sound.” Programs have been called “wonderfully well-selected, versatile, interesting and musical.”

This year’s tour program will begin with three Renaissance motets by Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, Marc Antonio Ingegneri, and Peter Philips chronicling the life of Christ from birth, crucifixion to resurrection. Then follow three French chansons on the theme of love. The featured work on the first half of the program will be the double-choir motet Der Geist hilft by J. S. Bach. The choir will precede this grand composition with Immortal Bach by the Norwegian composer Knut Nystedt.

The second half of the concert begins with Three Shakespeare Songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The Choir will then sing sacred works by Sergei Rachmaninoff, Charles Ives, and Trond Kverno. The program will conclude with I Love My Love by Gustav Holst, a choral tango, and the fanciful Scherzo by Lars Edlund.