FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                                          April 24, 2006

FINAL CHORAL CONCERT SET FOR SUNDAY AFTERNOON

            Northwestern Oklahoma State University will present the annual Spring Choral Concert at 3 p.m., Sunday, April 30, in Herod Hall Auditorium. It will feature the Concert Choir, University Singers and the University Chorale. The concert is free and the public is invited.

Northwestern Oklahoma State University Chorale students practice “stealing” the moon during a rehearsal of The Stolen Moon, part of the annual Spring Choral Concert. The free concert will be at 3 p.m., Sunday, in Herod Hall Auditorium.

Dr. James Shrader, chair of the music department, and Dr. Aija Shrader, assistant professor of music, will direct the concert. Dr. Rodney Murrow, professor of music, will accompany the singers.

The concert will open with Southwestern Suite for mixed chorus and piano arranged by Randol Alan Bass. It will be sung by the Concert Choir. “Southwestern Suite” is a medley of songs from the southwest United States, including “Green Grow the Lilacs,” “ Git Along Little Dogies,” “Shall We Gather at the River,” “Red River Valley,” “Rio Grande” and “Skip to My Lou.”

The University Singers will sing two contemporary arrangements of English folk songs by Oliver Barton. The first will be the familiar song “Early One Morning.” The second selection is titled “The Gurt Black Dog of Somerset,” which tells the story of a ghost dog roaming the moors of Somerset to rescue lost wanderers.

Northwestern vocal scholar Jillian Bartow, a sophomore from Laverne, will sing “Ach, ich fühl’s” from Die Zauberflöte by Mozart. Bartow was the third place finisher at the Oklahoma sing competition sponsored by the National Association of Teachers of Singing held this spring.

The final selection on the program will feature the University Chorale in a stylized production of the children’s choral opera The Stolen Moon by contemporary English composer Paul Ayers. This performance will be the American premiere of this work.

For most of the academic year, Dr. James Shrader and composer Ayers have been in e-mail dialogue about he possibility of presenting this new work. Although originally written for children’s voices, Ayers became fascinated with Dr. Shrader’s idea to produce the opera in a stylized version using a university choral ensemble.

At the conclusion of these discussions, Ayers made the score and parts available to Northwestern and rehearsals began. Dr. Shrader converted the parts to track accompaniment using the Garritan Personal Orchestra digital instruments.

The Stolen Moon staging has been devised by Dr. Aija Shrader, director of Northwestern’s opera workshop. The cleverly designed movement allows for both concert and opera to co-exist on the same stage.

The concert brings to a close the week-long celebration of the arts at Northwestern, which included a performance by the symphonic band, the opera workshop’s production of Mozart’s The Impresario and the Northwestern Arts Society-sponsored art exhibit in the J.W. Martin Library.

For more information about the concert, contact Dr. James Shrader at (580) 327-8591 or by e-mail at jashrader@nwosu.edu.

-NW-

Back to News Page