The UTC Chamber Singers and University Master Chorale will present their final performance for fall semester on Friday, November 30, at 7 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 305 W. 7th St.,, Chattanooga. The groups will be conducted by Dr. Kevin Ford and graduate student Charity Palmer. The performance will feature several African-American Spirituals arranged by UTC Professor Dr. Roland Carter. The concert is open to the public and no admission will be charged.
The UTC Chambers Singers are the primary vocal performance group at UTC. They recently returned from a tour of Austria where they performed in several significant performance venues. The chorus is composed of undergraduate and graduate students who wish to perform the highest caliber of choral music written for small ensembles from all the major historical periods through contemporary choral works. The students represent a variety of majors ranging from music majors to pre-med.
The University Master Chorale was originally instituted as a summer performance ensemble to meet the requirement of an ensemble for graduate students during the summer term. Beginning in 2004 the group expanded to allow the students to interact and perform with non-university singers from the Chattanooga area. Members of several Chattanooga choral organizations including the Chattanooga Bach Choir, Chattanooga Choral Arts, Chattanooga Symphony Chorus as well as singers from local church choirs combine to perform either a major choral work or several smaller choral works of significance in the summer. The group’s success was such that the members requested that they reform during the regular academic year to have another chance to perform their summer repertoire, thus their appearance on this concert.
Among the repertoire to be presented in the concert are two well-known spiritual arrangements, “Little Innocent Lamb” by Bartholomew and “Ain’-a That Good News” by Dawson in addition to other works. The Chamber Singers will join the Master Chorale to perform Eric Whitacre’s “Sleep,” a contemporary choral masterpiece with an interesting history. The composer originally wrote the piece using Robert Frost’s poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” but when the poet’s estate would not release the rights to the poem, an entirely new text had to be written to accommodate the structure of the original.
The Chattanooga community is very fortunate to have Dr. Roland Carter, an internationally known composer, arranger, and conductor on the UTC faculty, said Dr. Lee Harris, head of the UTC Music Department. “Roland Carter is one of Chattanooga’s finest musical gifts to the world. His work has touched the lives of countless singers and audiences,” Harris said. “His settings of African-American spirituals are definitive in their authenticity of style and expression while being at the same time eminently singable and enjoyable to hear. The Chamber Singers will be recording these settings in the spring of 2008 and will include several of them in this performance.”
For more information regarding this performance please contact the UTC Choral Activities Dept. at (423) 425-4612 or email chorus@utc.edu.
