DePauw choir performance in-the-round Sunday afternoon

Friday, November 6, 2015
Director Kristina Boerger rehearses members of the DePauw Chamber Singers in preparation for the ArtsFest choral concert,to be presented in-the-round at 3 p.m. Sunday. Seating for the performance on the Kresge Auditorium stage will create an intimate musical experience with performers interspersed throughout the audience. (Courtesy photo)

Responding to the ArtsFest 2015 interdisciplinary theme of "Art and Transformation," the joint DePauw University choirs Sunday will present a program of compositions based on songs that have existed for centuries in previous forms.

The entire Sunday afternoon performance, which begins at 3 p.m., will take place in-the-round with both musicians and audience members seated on the Green Center's Kresge Auditorium stage.

The DePauw Chamber Singers will open the program with a set in the Franco-Flemish polyphonic tradition of elaborate harmonies constructed over ancient liturgical chant. Included will be: an organum by Perotin (circa 1200 -- the first four-part harmony written in the West); Marian hymns by Renaissance masters Josquin Desprez, Jacob Clemens non Papa, and Rolande de Lassus; and four motets from the mid-20th-century French composer Maurice Duruflé.

The University Chorus will follow with a set of song texts from Shakespeare's plays set to vocal jazz arrangements by Sir George Shearing.

The set features instrumentalists Laura Brumbaugh on piano and Thomas Ring on bass. A company of thespians, under the direction of Amy Hayes, will collaborate with the musicians to preface each musical selection with a scene from the play that is the source of the lyrics.

Among the honored guests expected to attend the performance will be the Grammy Award-winning choral director Joseph Flummerfelt, a 1958 DePauw alum, and Lady Eleanor Geffert Shearing, Class of 55, wife of the late jazz musician and composer Sir George Shearing.

General admission tickets to the Sunday choral concert are $3. Tickets for seniors, children and all students are free.

For more information and purchases, visit www.depauw.edu/music/tickets.

The Green Center Box Office will also be open one hour prior to the concert. Spectators are urged to arrive early for preferred seating.

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