DePauw Choirs to perform Wednesday night at Gobin

The DePauw University Choirs, directed by Kristina Boerger, will present a free spring concert, “Comings and Going,” at the Gobin Memorial Methodist Church this Wednesday, April 12 at 7:30 p.m.

Courtesy of DePauw University

In a variation from its usual concert venue in Kresge Auditorium, the DePauw University Choirs, directed by Kristina Boerger, can be heard this week in the vocally gratifying acoustical space of Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church at 307 Simpson St.

The new five-member Resonance Ensemble will also join the DePauw Choir and DePauw Chamber Singers Wednesday, April 12 on the 7:30 p.m. program, titled “Comings and Goings.”

The evening’s selections refer to departures and arrivals of all sorts — metaphorical as well as locational. Sacred pieces hail from the shape-note repertoire of Early America, pre-Christian rites in the Caucasus Mountains, Jamaican gospel and revival traditions, and J.S. Bach’s Lutheran ministry in Leipzig. Folk idioms from Muslim and Christian Bulgaria will be heard alongside tunes from Appalachia and Scotland and the gospel harmony style of the American South.

The music of living composers will elevate the verse of Seamus de Brun, Edmund Waller, William Butler Yeats, and that most Buddhist of Hebrew teachers, the mysterious Ecclesiastes.

An appeal of bringing the choirs to Gobin is the increased visual and physical proximity to the audience.

“Working on enhanced audience engagement is part of the 21CM mandate to construct our performing experiences differently from the traditional ‘park and bark’ in a formal concert space, which often has a huge physical separation between performers and listeners,” Boerger said. “One of our pieces will invite audience involvement, and it’s much easier to do that kind of thing when we can all see and be next to one another.”

Admission to Wednesday’s choral concert at Gobin Church is free thanks to season sponsors Judson and Joyce Green. No tickets are needed.