The Wabash College Music Department will offer a its annual Fine Arts and Honor Scholarship Weekend Concert this Friday, March 16, at 8:00 p.m. in Salter Hall of the Fine Arts Center. Also this weekend, the Wabash College Glee Club will present its Campus Community Concert for the Wabash and Crawfordsville communities on Sunday evening, March 18, at 8:00 p.m. in the Salter Concert Hall of the Fine Arts Center at Wabash College.
Friday night’s concert will feature four Music Department ensembles: Wamidan (world music ensemble), Brass Ensemble, Jazz Band, and Glee Club.
Led by Visiting Assistant Professor David Akombo, Wamidan will perform songs and dances from South Africa.
The Jazz Band, directed by Steve Robinett, will perform upbeat standards by Count Basie, Glenn Miller, and Billie Strayhorn, and the Brass Ensemble, conducted by Assistant Professor Peter Hulen, will offer a fugue by J. S. Bach and an arrangement of a Beatles tune.
Directed by Assistant Professor Richard Bowen, the Glee Club will conclude the concert with a song from the Renaissance, a sea chantey, a spiritual, a pop tune, and the Wabash fight song.
The Glee Club, which will again be in concert Sunday evening for its Campus Community Concert, recently returned from its Spring 2007 Concert Tour. The Club’s seven-day itinerary included programs in Columbus and Toledo, Ohio, three concerts in Hillsdale, Michigan—including a program at Hillsdale College—and Valparaiso, Indiana.
The 42-member Glee Club will sing several favorite male chorus numbers, including Brothers, Sing On and There is Nothin’ Like a Dame. Sacred selections in Sunday’s concert include Randall Thompson’s powerful setting of The Last Words of David and Confirma hoc, Deus, a 16th-century Latin motet. The group will sing a lively set of spirituals based on Old Testament stories, including Ezekiel Saw the Wheel, Old Man Noah, and Dry Bones.
The audience will be invited to join their voices with the Glee Club on Wabash College’s favorite songs, Old Wabash and the Alma Mater. Finally, the concert will feature the premiere showing of video highlights from the Glee Club’s May 2006 concert tour to England, Scotland, and Wales. The Glee Club is under the direction of Dr. Richard Bowen and is accompanied by Ms. Cheryl Everett.
Both concerts — Friday’s Music Department Honor Scholarship Weekend concert and Sunday’s Glee Club concert — are free and open to the public.