Choir singing with songbooks

The Ashland University fall choral concert is shown here during a performance.


ASHLAND – Three choral ensembles — the Ashland University Chamber Singers, the
Ashland Area Chorus and the Ashland University Choir — will perform during this coming Sunday’s (Oct. 29) annual Fall Choral Concert.

The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place at Jack and Deb Miller Chapel starting at 4 p.m.

Rowland Blackley, director of choral activities and professor of music at AU, will conduct all three groups.

The AU Chamber Singers, a select choir, will sing a four-piece set of Renaissance madrigals, each about an aspect of love.

It will consist of a German song, “Ich Weiss Mir Ein Meidlein;” a French song, “Tant Que Vivrai;” “Dear Love, Be Not Unkind” by British composer Richard Dering; and Thomas Morley’s “It Was a Lover and His Lass” with text by William Shakespeare.

The Ashland Area Chorus, a mix of students and community members, will perform “Te Deum in C” by Benjamin Britten.

It is a dramatic anthem using ancient church poetry to praise God, and will feature AU alumna Elisha Noon as a soloist, as well as current AU student Robert Mouledoux, a music major, and Luke Tegtmeier on piano and organ, respectively.

The AU Choir, accompanied by pianist Deborah Logan, is comprised of students selected via audition and representing numerous academic majors.

It will close the program with six pieces, including “Sleep” by Eric Whitacre, a modern American composer; Susan LaBarr’s “Hope is the Thing with Feathers,” which will be sung by the women in the choir; Randall Thompson’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” which will be sung by the men in the choir; and “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord,” arranged by the late Moses Hogan.