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Associate Professor Paul
Crabb will conduct the 30th anniversary celebratory performance.
Rob Hill photo
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Choral Union Choir Celebrates 30 Years
By Nancy Moen
The University of Missouri Choral Union
will mark the 30th anniversary of the town-gown choir with a celebratory
performance of 300 singers and four internationally acclaimed
soloists at 8 p.m. on April 30 in Jesse Auditorium. Members of
Choral Union will join the University Singers, the Concert Chorale,
the Chamber Singers and the Columbia Civic Orchestra to perform
Giuseppi Verdi's masterpiece, Requiem. Paul Crabb, director
of MU choral activities, will conduct.
Three of the soloists appeared on the DVD
of Franco Zeffirelli's production of Aida: Soprano Adina
Aaron, who sang the title role in Aida; bass Paolo Pecchioli,
who sang the role of the King in Aida and performs regularly
at major European opera houses; and tenor Scott Piper, who sang
the role of Radames in Aida and is a rising opera star
in North America. Mezzo-soprano Dorothy Byrne is a regular singer
with Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Choral Union is a 200-member student and
community choir that serves as a vocal link between MU and the
surrounding community. Students, faculty, members of the professions
and blue-collar workers have populated Choral Union during its
30 years.
MU students earn credit hours toward their
degrees through the weekly rehearsals and appearances with Choral
Union. The rest of the performers join simply for the opportunity
to sing.
"These singers have a love for
great choral music, work diligently to perform well and sing the
best literature in Western European musical tradition," Crabb
says.
He describes the opportunity to perform such
music as exhilarating and a method of exploring the composer's
inner thoughts.
"The emotion in a work such as
Verdi's Requiem is not removed from people today,"
he says. "The thoughts of life and death, of the human struggle
to understand and accept what it means, are the same today as
in the 19th century. We have the opportunity to hear what Verdi
had to say about these complex issues through his music."
Betty Wilson, a local attorney and charter
member of Choral Union, appreciates the opportunity to perform
great music. She joined the group in spring 1974 to continue her
interest in vocal music. Wilson has been singing since childhood,
in high school and through her college years at the University
of Michigan.
"Choral Union has been wonderful
as a rich resource for acquaintances," Wilson says. "We
share a similar interest, and we all love to sing. It's one of
the few organizations that I know of where the community at large
interacts and collaborates on a single endeavor."
A varied repertoire of music from such composers
as Beethoven, Brahms, Berlioz, John Rutter and Leonard Bernstein
has inspired and sometimes tested the singers.
Although Wilson has enjoyed performing with
impressive guest soloists throughout the years, she remembers
with particular fondness the performances and rehearsals when
John Rutter and Robert Shaw worked with the Choral Union. Rutter
conducted his own music.
"Having the composer here to conduct
is stimulating and energizing," Wilson says. "It's their
own music, so you feel like you're getting a first-hand interpretation
of how the composer wanted it."
Wilson remembers some of the more humorous
moments as well, including the rehearsal with Robert Shaw when
the entire bass section disappeared from sight as the bleachers
collapsed.
Ira "Rocky" Powell was the first
conductor of Choral Union, which attracted numerous faculty and
visiting conductors: Otto Werner-Mueller, Gerhardt Zimmerman,
Margaret Hillis, Duncan Couch, Robert Shaw, John Rutter, Sir David
Willcocks, Paul Drummond, Greg Fuller, Ann Howard Jones, William
McGlaughlin and David Rayl.
Marilyn Cheetham, a Choral Union singer for
29 years, says the group provides a pleasurable service to the
community and contributes to the cultural lives of its citizens.
"We have had the privilege of hearing some wonderful soloists
and of singing with orchestras such as the Saint
Louis Symphony Orchestra and the Kansas
City Symphony, as well as our own University
Philharmonic. I have enjoyed everything about my time in Choral
Union."
Tickets for the performance are available
through the University
Concert Series at (573) 882-3875.
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Copyright © 2007 — Curators of the University of Missouri
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Published by the Mizzou Alumni Association
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Last Update:
March 12, 2007
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