The University Singers, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s historic flagship choral ensemble, will be traveling to New York City in March to perform at Carnegie Hall.
Their trip is March 24-29 with their performance at Carnegie Hall taking place at 8 p.m. EST in Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium. For tickets, visit http://go.unl.edu/a5jg.
The University Singers are under the direction of Professor and Director of Choral Activities Peter Eklund, who has conducted choirs at Carnegie Hall on numerous occasions. But he knows it is still a special place.
“It’s frightening in a way,” he said. “But at the same time, you’re so focused, I really forget to stop and inhale and kind of remember what I’m doing.”
On one visit, he was stopped outside of Carnegie Hall, and his parents were taking a photo of him in front of the poster advertising a concert with his photo on it.
“A guy walked by and said, ‘That guy thinks he looks like that conductor,’” Eklund said.
This will be the third performance at Carnegie Hall for the University Singers in Eklund’s 18 years at UNL.
“I know I have a lot of students who want to perform professionally, and I think that’s wonderful,” he said. “But I also have a number of my students that have been able to put on their resume that they made their Carnegie Hall debut because of our experiences there.”
The trip is supported with a grant from the Hixson-Lied Endowment, as well as additional support from the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts and the Glenn Korff School of Music.
“It is just amazing. It is magnificent for the kids to sing seminal music in a great space,” Eklund said. “There’s something magical about Carnegie Hall, as well, and it has to do with the fact that some of the most famous musicians in the world walked that stage, and it breaks all the rules for acoustics.”
The University Singers program will include one of the most famous American pieces ever written, Samuel Barber’s “Agnus Dei.”
“At Sept. 11, the music that was always playing on TV was Barber’s ‘Adagio for Strings. Everybody knows it,” he said. “No one knows he wrote it for choir. It will be rather arresting.”
Their program also includes music by Giovanni Gabrieli, “Gloria;” the Renaissance British Composer Robert Parsons’ “Ave Maria;” “Pilgrim Song,” arranged by Ryan Murphy; and the American spiritual “Keep Your Hand on the Plow.” They will also be performing an 18-part Pentatonix-style version of Phil Collins’ “Take Me Home.”
“All these appropriately trained bel canto singers are singing in their American Idol style voices [on the Phil Collins song],” Eklund said. “I’m hearing awesome sounds from people that I’ve never heard before.”
They are sharing the program with the Masterworks Festival Chorus and the National Festival Chorus. So the combined mass choirs will also perform two songs, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Five Mystical Songs” with a professional orchestra and a New York soloist and “American Rhapsody.”
On the way to New York City, the students will stop in Muscatine, Iowa, where they will perform at a church that has an endowed concert series. Eklund says the students will have some time to explore New York City, and he plans to give them lists of things they can see.
“The only thing they can’t do is sleep in,” he said. “I want them to get out and do something.”
Eklund hopes people on campus know that that there is a place for all singers in the Glenn Korff School of Music.
“Even if you’re not majoring in music, we would love to have you sing,” he said. “Every single one of our ensembles is populated by non-music majors. There’s a place for you.”
Eklund said he made his debut as a conductor at Carnegie Hall around 1990 or so.
“You just never know who is going to be in the audience when you’re performing,” he said. “The last time I was there, it was the director of the New York Pops Orchestra who was there. He was the first in line to run up and shake my hand. You just never know who is there, which is fun.
“And you never know when you get up on stage to perform, when you are going to change someone’s life.”
-- Story by Kathe Anderson, Hixson-Lied