St. Lawrence University’s Laurentian Singers will kick off their spring break tour to New Orleans with a concert beginning at 4 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 28, at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, located at 10 Mill St. in Cazenovia. The concert is free and open to the public.
Senior Laurentian Singer and soprano soloist Hannah Chanatry hails from Cazenovia. Director Barry Torres has long been associated with the region as the founding and current music director of Schola Cantorum on Syracuse. He is also a Syracuse University alumnus.
The Laurentian Singers, a select co-educational choir of 23 undergraduate singers, continues its 69-year tradition of choral excellence at St. Lawrence University. The group has won wide acclaim since its founding in 1948, and, in addition to their many performances on campus and in the community, the ensemble has toured extensively.
In recent years, they have performed in Trinidad and Tobago, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, France, New York, Boston and Central Europe, singing for enthusiastic, packed audiences and meeting with other choirs. Their wide-ranging repertoire, drawn from music of many styles and countries, reflects the spirit of the liberal arts experience at St. Lawrence.
The repertoire this year focuses on 20th- and 21st-century American music inspired by great poetry, featuring the work of Syracuse-composer Earl George and his setting of five poems from William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence.” The work of E. E. Cummings is represented by Vincent Persichetti’s robust “sam was a man,” sung by the men, and Eric Whitacre’s lushly transcendent “I thank you God for most This amazing day.”
The women will be featured in a setting of Emily Dickinson’s “If I can stop one heart from breaking” by Libby Larsen, whose work has been featured on several Society for New Music concerts. Robert Frost’s inspirational “Choose Something Like a Star” as set by the dean of American choral composers, Randall Thompson, will close this portion of the program.
The concert opens with “Brindisi” from Verdi’s “La Traviata” featuring Ms. Chanatry as soloist. The varied program also includes popular hits such as Rodgers and Hart’s “Blue Moon,” Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke” and Dave Matthew’s “Gravedigger,” as well as the American folk hymn “How can I keep from singing,” gospel tunes “I’ll Fly Away” and “Sing till the Power” and the spiritual “In Bright Mansions.”
