Fall Choral Concert Features Westmont Choirs

The annual Fall Choral Concert featuring Westmont’s Choir, Chamber Singers and Vox Lumina Women’s Chorale will be 8 p.m. Oct. 15 at Santa Barbara's First United Methodist Church, 303 E. Anapamu St. (at Garden). A donation will be requested.

The choirs will present “Songs of Hope and Mourning” which will consider lament and the human condition, from passionate grief to unrelenting hope.

Featured works will include such classic lament texts as “David's Lament on the Death of His Son, Absalom” by Joshua Shank; “O Vos Omnes” set by David Childs; and Brahms's “Grand Motet Schaffe in Mir, Gott” (Create in Me a Clean Heart), from Psalm 51, on King David's prayer of repentance and plea for restoration following his adulterous affair with Bathsheba and the arranged killing of her husband.

The concert, however, will not exclude songs of praise and joy. Concordia College conductor René Clausen's “Laudate” will open the concert with a stirring laud to the Creator and “Spiritual Songs,” by former St. Olaf conductor Kenneth Jennings, features George Herbert’s profound poetry on such topics as love, prayer and praise.

Vox Lumina Women's Chorale, conducted by Laura Brinton, will present “Kyrie” and “Gloria” by Lithuanian composer Kristina Vasiliauskaite.  These settings of the traditional Latin texts, “Lord Have Mercy” and “Glory to God in the Highest” are taken from Vasiliauskaite’s Missa Brevis and are beautifully set for women's voices. Vox Lumina will also perform a romantic, haunting setting of “The Snow” by Edward Elgar, with violin duet.

San Francisco composer Kirke Mechem’s “Blow Ye the Trumpet” explores the beauty and power of dying for a right cause, reflecting on the martyrdom of John Brown during America's struggles with slavery and emancipation.

“Reagan Hymn,” set to music by Westmont Choir Director Steven Hodson, features poetry by a teen-aged Ronald Reagan that contrasts death with hope by asking, “Why does sorrow drench us when our fellow passes on? He’s just exchanged life’s dreary dirge for an eternal life of song!”

Both hope and mourning can be intrinsic to romantic love. The Chamber Singers' selections will consider love from viewpoints at times serious, at times playful.

Monteverdi's archetypical madrigal “Si Ch’io Vorrei Morire” offers a look at passionate human love that is so intense as to be almost painful. Eric Whitacre’s lyrical and breathtakingly gorgeous “Five Hebrew Love Songs” will feature Westmont Chamber Orchestra director Emily Sommermann on violin. Two 16th-century Spanish Villancico selections, by Juan Vasquez, will contemplate the qualities of melancholy and yearning in romantic love.

Hope and trust infuse two spirituals, “Lord, I Know I Been Changed,” by Bruce More, and “We Shall Walk Through the Valley in Peace” by the late Moses Hogan. Hope for newer, better worlds is emblazoned in Paul Halley's fantastic, rhythmically driving “Untraveled Worlds” with texts from Alfred Lord Tennyson's “Ulysses.” “Untraveled Worlds” will feature electric violin, bass, and percussion and will close the concert.

For more information, contact Hodson at (805) 565-6192 or e-mail music@westmont.edu.