Choral Society Sings of “Love Lost, Love Found”

Saturday, May 17 at 7:30 p.m. at the Orcas Center

This Saturday, May 17 at 7:30 PM the Orcas Choral Society will present “Love Lost, Love Found” at Orcas Center. The program will include the popular tunes “Fields of Gold” and the Beatles’ “Yesterday,” and is centered on the work of three American composers: Cecil Effinger, Eric Barnum and Roger H. Wesby.

Effinger, a native of Colorado, was an inventor, mathematician and composer. He invented two commercially successful devices—a musical typewriter and the device Tempowatch™ (which accurately measures the tempo of music as it is being performed). The Choral Society will perform his “Four Pastorales”, settings of poetry by Thomas Hornsby Ferril. Ferril’s text consists of four scenes of life in the Great Plains, and is scored for a cappella choir and solo oboe. Karen Blinn will be the featured oboe soloist.

Composer Eric Barnum has become a sensation with high school choirs; all four pieces on the Orcas Choral Society program were commissioned by high-school choral organizations. Using texts by William Shakespeare, Thomas MacDonaugh (19thcentury English) and Robert Bode (artistic director of Choral Arts in Seattle), Barnum explores the wide range of emotions surrounding love and romance, and its relationship to music. Saturday night’s audience will hear expressions of romantic anticipation, breakup, healing, and finally life-long commitment.

Roger Wesby is a classically trained composer who is equally at home with jazz and Latin American music. After years of teaching and conducting orchestras and choirs in El Salvador and Costa Rica, he returned to his native United States to complete graduate degrees at Westminster Choir College and Indiana University. Since 1996, Roger Wesby has served Director of Choral Activities and Vocal Studies at Wagner College where he teaches Music History, the History of Blues and Jazz, Conducting and Practical Musicianship. His choral arrangements of “Fields of Gold” and “Yesterday” are also Choral Society premiers on this program.

The final piece is Kalá Kallá (Light Bride), from a collection of Five Hebrew Love Songs by Eric Whitacre. Often called a “rock star” of contemporary American choral music, Eric set the Hebrew text by Grammy award-winning soprano Hila Plitmann, whom he later married.

Sharon Abreu, Vala Ross, and Ann Brewer will each sing brief solos; Jim Shaffer Bauck will play percussion and Patty Johnson will be the pianist. Antoinette Botsford will read some of the texts in this varied concert about love lost and love found.

Ticket prices are $15 for adults and $5 for students. Contact the Orcas Center at www.orcascenter.org or call 376-2281 ext. 1 for advance ticket sales.

For further information, visit www.orcaschoralsociety.org, or info@orcaschoralsociety.org or call Cynthia at 376-4355.