The University of Nebraska-Lincoln Glenn Korff School of Music’s All-Collegiate Choir and Chamber Singers present “The Reimagined Song”, featuring art songs arranged for choir and a contemporary setting of Te Deum on Saturday, April 13 at 7:30 p.m. in Kimball Recital Hall.
The Chamber Singers will expand the idea of chamber music by performing music originally written for solo voice and piano. Harry T. Burleigh, a noted baritone known for his settings of spirituals as art songs, was a prolific African-American composer of solo music. His cycle “Five Songs of Laurence Hope” sets exotic texts of love and passion by Adela Florence Nicolson who wrote under the pseudonym Laurence Hope. Of his own accord, Samuel Barber transformed his iconic setting of “Sure on this shining night.” Both bubbling and serene, two songs by Ernest Chausson have been transformed for treble chorus and tenor-bass chorus. The set will end with the fiery story of a boy pleading to his father about the seductive tempter known as “Erlkönig” as set by Franz Schubert.
The All-Collegiate Choir will present Dan Forrest’s Te Deum, a 4th-century Latin hymn with hundreds of settings. This three-movement work opens with a peak-and-valley theme used as a chant-like motif. The prayers, added later to the traditional text, provides a quiet contrast to the two larger sections. The work ends with a tour de force of rapidly changing meters, frequent shifts of tonal centers, and high energy culminating in a recapitulation of the central theme from the opening.
Tickets are Adults $5; Students/Seniors $3. This performance will also be live webcast. Visit music.unl.edu the night of the performance for the link.