Musical premiere highlights holiday choral concert at WFU

By Pam Barrett
336.758.5237
November 14, 2003

The Wake Forest University Concert Choir, Collegium Vocal Ensemble and Wake Forest Chorale will present its annual Holiday Concert Dec. 4 at 8 p.m. in Scales Fine Arts Center’s Brendle Recital Hall. The highlight of the concert will be the world premiere performance of “O Sing to the Lord a New Song (Psalm 96),” composed by Dan Locklair, award-winning composer-in-residence and professor of music at Wake Forest.

The Concert Choir will perform Locklair’s five-minute original composition for chorus and piano, which was commissioned to honor Ed Christman, retired chaplain at Wake Forest.

The piece was commissioned by Mary Ann Hampton Taylor, Wake Forest graduate and former director of Wake Forest’s Student Health Service, and her husband, Wake Forest graduate Gerald Taylor. Taylor has known Christman since they were Wake Forest students and worked closely with him during their years together in the university’s Student Life office.

“O Sing to the Lord a New Song (Psalm 96)” is a personalized, musical interpretation of Christman’s favorite psalm, Psalm 96.

The Collegium Vocal Ensemble will sing a motet by Bruckner, an arrangement of “Coventry Carol,” the well-known “Carol of the Bells” in the original Ukrainian as well as other carols.

The Wake Forest Chorale will perform a setting of “Magnificat ” by Dietrich Buxtehude, and, together, the combined choirs will sing a movement from Rachmaninoff’s “Vespers” in the original Russian.

The audience will be invited to join the singers in closing the concert with the chorus, “Hallelujah,” from Handel’s “Messiah.”

Brian Gorelick, director of choral ensembles and associate professor of music at Wake Forest, will conduct the concert.

The concert is free and open to the public. For more information, call 336-758-5364.

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