Members of the Northwestern Oklahoma State University choirs will present a concert titled “Music and War” March 11 at 7 p.m. in the Enid Symphony Recital Hall and again on March 12 at 7 p.m. in the Alva Church of the Nazarene.
Northwestern Oklahoma State University Department of Fine Arts will present the Masterworks Concert “Music and War,” featuring the Concert Choir, Chorale and Singers, March 11 at 7 p.m. in the Enid Symphony Recital Hall, 301 W. Broadway Ave., and on March 12 at 7 p.m. at the Alva Church of the Nazarene, 728 College. Both concerts are free and open to the public, but donations are appreciated.
Max Ridgway, adjunct instructor of music, will be a special guest guitarist for the evening. He will be paying the guitar in several different ways creating sounds that replicate drum and snare drum sounds.
A multi-media presentation is planned during the concert. It will consist of historical pictures, as well as children’s drawings and poetry from the Civil War.
Karsten Longhurst, instructor of music and director of choral studies, has been working with students since January to prepare for this concert. Longhurst said the masterworks is going to be a multi-movement work, which is a large work consisting of more than one song. He said the works are typically 20-45 minute pieces. One of the pieces they will be performing will be a 25-minute piece based on four poems from the Civil War.
Longhurst said they also will be performing a larger piece that consists of poetries written by children who were imprisoned in the Czech Republic concentration camp Theresienstadt during World War II.
“They’re a very beautiful, yet also very ugly set of poems,” Longhurst said. “I’m fascinated how resilient the human spirit is. How music plays a role in helping us come through tragedy. Many of us face death in family members, cancer, horrific things. Maybe not war, but in our own way we feel it might be. In all that I believe there’s hope, and how we can reconcile our lives with horrific events is pretty amazing.”
Longhurst said toward the end of the concert they will sing “Inscription of Hope” by composer Z. Randall Stroope and “As the Rain Hides the Stars” by composer Elaine Hagenberg with the purpose of bringing hope toward the end of hardships. He said a few of the students had met Hagenberg in a conference they attended, and he thinks it’s fun for the students to sing a piece from a composer they got to meet in person.
“We’re going to explore the darker side of humanity, meanwhile also exploring the amazing resilience of the human spirit,” Longhurst said.
For more information contact Longhurst at (580) 327-8692 or krlonghurst@nwosu.edu.
-NW-