Four choirs bring holiday spirit to campus

By Carl Nadig

DeKalb | Four choir ensembles will celebrate the holidays Sunday with their annual holiday concert.

The festive performance, which is 3 p.m. Sunday at the Music Building’s Boutell Memorial Concert Hall, includes a historical array of global music. Scheduled as one of the last concerts before the new year, the annual concert focuses on the manifestation of seasonal celebration and the upbeat holiday spirit.

“We get a really wide range of repertoire,” said Choral Activities Director Eric Johnson. “For example, the opening piece is a piece by Baroque composer Giovanni Gabrieli, so it’s got brass ensemble with an organ and multiple choirs. It’s an experience where the choirs are singing behind, in front and above the audience. So, we get this quadraphonic sound from the 17th century and how they conceived of that.”

The holiday concert will also serve as a celebration for the 100th birthday of English composer Benjamin Britten.

“It’s a mix of four ensembles,” said Brittany Anderson, junior vocal performance major. “It’s the chamber choir, concert choir, university chorus and the DeKalb Festival Chorus; they’re all coming together to do the concert.”

Students who attend the weekend concert will find some traditional songs slightly altered to be more contemporary.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun songs, maybe not a lot of songs people hear on a regular basis,” said Dan Marino, sophomore vocal performance major. “There’s a song called ‘Go Tell It on the Mountain,’ which is a classic song, and it has a nice twist to it…. It’s changed rhythmically, so it’s kind of more jazzy instead of with a classic tone.”