UCF Choral Concert: That Music Always Round Me

‘THAT MUSIC ALWAYS ROUND ME’
The Women’s Chorus, University Chorus and Chamber Singers

The music on tonight’s program spans cultures, times and places. These songs are those of our histories and heritage, joys and sorrows, journeys and destinations – the music always round us.

 

I Chamber Singers
David L. Brunner, conductor

Voicedance V
Greg Jasperse

Voicedance is just that — a joyful exploration of jazz voicings, extended harmonies and dancing, syncopated rhythms.

Pala Palá   
Mario Perini

This playful arrangement of a Venezuelan song uses cross rhythms and shifting meters, alternating between duple and triple groupings – and sometimes both at once!

8 Laughing Voices  
Hyo-Won Woo

Korean composer Hyo-Won Woo provides a quirky opportunity for singers to play with nonsense syllables and explore the many ways to laugh.

Rockin’ Jerusalem  
arr. Robert L. Morris

This rhythmically and harmonically complex setting of a familiar spiritual has its roots in the blues tradition.

 

II Women’s Chorus
Kelly A Miller, conductor

The Journey

Stormy Weather (from Cotton Club)   
Harold Arlen, arr. Lojeski

“Stormy Weather” was written by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler. Ethel Waters first sang it at The Cotton Club night club in Harlem in 1933.

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go…” – Dr. Seuss

The Little Road 
Moira Smiley

The lyric speaks of the moment when we must decide whether to follow the road into the unknown, or to stay with what is known, dear and comforting.  ~Moira Smiley

“Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.” – Confucious

Lineage
Andrea Ramsey

Margaret Walker’s poem leapt off the page at me – these words were crying to be sung. I was drawn to the strength of the grandmothers described by Walker. This was not frailty—this was determined womanhood. ~ Andrea Ramsey

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world.” E.B. White

Changes      
Audrey Snyder

Changing the world starts with just one person.

“I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.” – Edward Everett Hale

Never Never Land (from Peter Pan)      
Jule Styne, arr. Huff

Wendy: Peter where do you live?
Peter Pan: It’s a secret place.
Wendy: Please, tell me!
Peter Pan: Would you believe me if I told you?
Wendy: I promise.
Peter Pan: For sure?
Wendy: For sure.

“Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.” – Hans Christen Andersen

Still I Rise  
Rosephanye Powell

Still I Rise was inspired by the poem of the same name by poet laureate Maya Angelou. It is a women’s anthem, saluting the strength of women to persevere through life’s difficulties–low self-esteem, physical and emotional abuse, rape, incest, prejudice, abandonment, and such like. In summary, though a woman’s life or past may be filled with tears and heartaches, with each day that she finds herself still living, she finds that she has grown stronger and risen a little higher because her circumstances have not overcome her. Thus, every new day can be one of hope and joy because regardless of the past, today, “still I rise”! ~Rosephanye Powell

“Fall seven times, stand up eight.” – Japanese Proverb

 

III University Chorus
David L. Brunner, conductor

High Flight  
David L. Brunner

John Gillespie Magee, Jr. lived just 19 years.  He was a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force when the Spitfire VZ-H he was flying was descending at high speed through a break in the clouds and collided mid-air with an Airspeed Oxford trainer, just below the cloud base at 1,400 feet over the hamlet of Roxholme, Lincolnshire, England.  His popular poem High Flight describes the delirious feeling of wheeling and soaring, and an intimate connection with the divine.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth, and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings: Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds, and done a hundred things you have not dreamed of, soared and swung, wheeled and soared and swung high in the sunlit silence.  Hov’ring there, I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung my eager craft through footless halls of air… up, up the long, delirious burning blue I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace.  Where never lark, or ever eagle flew; and, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod the high untrespassed sanctity of space, put out my hand and touched the face of God.

City Called Heaven   
arr. Josephine Poelinitz

City Called Heaven is a “sorrow song” that is usually performed in the style of “surge-singing”.  This arrangement is a slow gospel interpretation of the original.

Precious Lord  
arr. Arnold Sevier

Thomas A Dorsey was the “father of black gospel music” and was at one time so closely associated with the genre that songs written in the new style were sometimes known as “dorseys”.  Precious Lord is perhaps the best known.  It was created when Dorsey’s wife, Nettie Harper, died in childbirth in 1932, along with their infant son; Dorsey was inconsolable and wrote the song in his grief. It was first recorded by the Heavenly Gospel Singers in 1937 and was Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s favorite song.

Barter
Mark Sirett

Sara Teasdale has been an important muse for vocal composers.  Canadian composer Mark Sirett connects with the lyric romanticism of her verse, and has composed an harmonically luscious setting of these familiar lines “life has loveliness to sell… buy it and never count the cost”.

Galop
Ken Berg

The galop, named after the fastest running gait of a horse, is a lively country dance, introduced in the late 1820s to Parisian society and popular in Vienna, Berlin and London. The galop was a forerunner of the polka and an even more lively, faster version called the can-can developed in Paris around 1830.   Numerous galops were written by the “Waltz King” Johann Strauss II.  Ken Berg’s Galop uses only solfege syllables as text.  Hold on!

 

IV Combined Choirs 

Phoenix Song
David L. Brunner
In remembrance of and to honor all those affected by the Pulse nightclub tragedy on June 12, 2016.

As the phoenix rises from its ashes, sings renewal as from winded horn, drawing deeply, filling up its lungs with breath and spirit, bound again, reborn. So, we too arise from ash and sorrow; so, we too awake from horror pain, linking breath and spirit to each other: linking, voice to voice, a choral chain. Weave these threads of music into life, as chords, like strings of heaven, bind us fast. Sing out loud the song of re-Creation! Sing we our tomorrow, not our past. How do we arise from ash, from terror? Cries each voice, “we’re healing as we sing.” Like the phoenix, we will rise from ashes; linking breath to spirit, song takes wing!

I Love You/ What a Wonderful World     
arr. Craig Hella Johnson

Louis Armstrong’s performance of What a Wonderful World is a classic.  This arrangement skillfully combines this well-known tune and message with Larry Norman’s I Love You.

“People all over the world, they’re openin’ up, they’re comin’ around and they’re sayin’ I love you.”

I see friends shaking hands, saying “How do you do?”  They’re really saying, “I love you.”

 

CHAMBER SINGERS

Soprano

Natalie Almeter
Gabrielle Grant
Genesis Henriquez
Mairead O’Rourke
Allison Stanley
Natalia Valdes-Molina

Alto

Maricel Cumbo
Linsey Duca
Maggie Gifford
Johanna Gonzales
Whitley Lacy
Heidi Mattern
Maeghin Mueller
Rachel Page
Elise Spagnuolo

Tenor

Harrison Acosta
Dillan Mohottige
Alejandro Naranjo
Micah Walker
Zach Weinstein

Bass

Logan Emlet
Matthew Fackler
Aaron Kass
Quinn McCardie
Jesse Randall
James Sherwood
Taylor Skipper
Aidan Smith
John Sublette

 

WOMEN’S CHORUS

Soprano I

Carla M. Aguilar
Ashley Alligood
Caralyn Clark
Melissa Derison
Melanie Fesmire
Olivia Figh
Courtney Guider
Joyce Camille Hernandez
Katelyn Mendenhall
Mackenzie Newton
Jacqueline O’Brien
Alyssa Parker
Amibka Ramdehal
Mackenzie Rines
Allyson Sherron
Sarah Vogelsong

Soprano II

Rayne Crivelli
Leah Daniel
Lisa Guadalupe
Maddy Jarvis
Kayle Kass
Whitley Lacy
Zaria Modeste
Jasmine Moreira
Queenija Morris
Cristina Olarte
Jennifer Powell
Heather Reid
Rebecca Rosario
Stephanie Salgado
Briseida Ubillus
Judlyne Valmyr

Alto I

Lynette Davis
Eleanor Didden
Kristin Linn
Lora Korpar
Madison Slamka
Shelby Thomas
Ebony Williams

Alto II

Destiny Antonelli
Sarah Barbee
Cathy Fearn
Darien Frey
Chloe Gaber
Lundeidra Lawrence
Victoria Lee
Maggie Luter
Alexis Mack
Melanie Niarhos
Ashley Vega
Lilly Vreeland

UNIVERSITY CHORUS

Soprano

Natalie Almeter
Giselle Beuscher
Sarah Brickeen
Andrea Cimino
Alexis Divalerio
Stephanie Eugster
Shannon Fitzpatrick
Courtney Guider
Genesis Henriquez
Joyce Hernandez
Mariana Mendonca
Maeghin Mueller
Mackenzie Newton
Kaelynn Norkas
Mairead O’Rourke
Christine Sack
Andrea Segarra
Allison Stanley
Sarah Stanley
Elizabeth Warner
Alexis Whitehead

Alto

Dominique Chambers
Maricel Cumba
Breanna Costa
Linsey Duca
Kathryn Dyer
Maggie Gifford
Whitley Lacy
Ariana Lanahan
Alyssa Long
Taylor Long
Gayssie Lugo
Melanie Niarhos
Elizabeth Polachek
Rebecca Rosario
Romana Saintil
Meaghan Sharp
Christina Torres
Briseida Ubillus
Lauren Yacht

Tenor

Harrison Acosta
Armani Adames
Jordan Bicasan
Karlo Corona
Peter Devita
Carlos Hernandez
Christopher Ludwig
Aden Martinez
Sean McKeel
Alejandro Naranjo
Deyvion Norris
Seth Pecore
Andres Soler-Garzon
Micah Walker
Dalton Wilkerson

Bass

Steven Brisco
Matthew Fackler
Steven Farley
Ryan Goodwin
Michael Hanusiak
Colin Jackson
Stephen Jay
Quinn McCardie
Thai McGrath
James Sherwood
Phoebe Singletary
Taylor Skipper
Aidan Smith
Andrew Smith
Christopher Tanberg