It performs as a full choir simply twice a 12 months, so now can be a good time to soak up the melodic voices of the Ladies’s Choral Society.
Beneath the course of Melissa Brunkan, the choir’s 18th conductor total and third girl to carry the place because the group’s first efficiency in 1935, the 65-strong WCS on Jan. 22 takes on the works of Ron Kean, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Vivaldi in Braveness, Hope, Pleasure — Ladies’s Choral Society Winter Live performance 2023.
Kean’s four-movement American Mass, which opens the live performance, combines the formality of conventional Latin choral music with the keenness of American gospel music.
From there, College of Oregon Faculty of Music and Dance college students Grace Miller and Emma Jones — who’re this 12 months’s recipients of the WCS Densmore Scholarship Fund — take heart stage with arias. Miller will sing “Vedrai Carino” from Don Giovanni, and Jones sings “Sposa Son Disprezzata” from Bajazet.
As is its customized, the WCS program is eclectic and enjoyable. Apart from the formal fare, there are up to date works by the likes of Dolly Parton (“Gentle of a Clear Blue Morning”), American people and blues singer Lead Stomach (“Convey Me Little Water, Silvy”).
Additionally featured are works by Consuelo Velazquez and Jim Papoulis in addition to compositions from rising composers Might Erlewine and Elaine Hagensberg.
WCS acquired its begin when Maud Densmore was approached in 1934 with the thought of creating a girls’s choir in Eugene. Densmore took the thought to patrons at Mu Phi Epsilon, a co-ed worldwide skilled music fraternity, which mentioned sure to funding the mission.
With funds secured, greater than 300 girls utilized for the choir, and 110 had been accepted. They gathered on April 18, 1935, on the UO for the very first live performance. It cleared $161.20, in line with the WCS web site. Densmore was the pianist who accompanied the choir. For the previous 20 years, the pianist for WCS has been Vicki Brabham, a staple of Eugene’s music scene.
All year long, a smaller ensemble of WCS — the 14-member touring firm known as Grace Notes — reaches out to the neighborhood, because the WCS web site notes, as “ambassadors of musical enjoyable,” going to retirement and long-term care amenities in addition to for neighborhood teams. Brabham is the director and accompanist.
Braveness, Hope, Pleasure — Ladies’s Choral Society Winter Live performance 2023 is 3 pm Sunday, Jan. 22, at Beall Live performance Corridor on the College of Oregon. $8-$16. Proceeds go to the Densmore Scholarship Fund for UO music college students. Extra details about the Ladies’s Choral Society is at WomensChoralSociety.org.