With the help of some gifted composers and a dedicated conductor, the Dartmouth Chamber Singers will be doing just that. As magnificent voices suffuse the hall of Rollins Chapel next Friday, the creme de la creme of musical composition from around the globe will find a keen audience in Hanover.
Dr. Robert Duff, the conductor who also directs the Handel Society, will lead the 22-member Hopkins Ensemble in their Fall term performance entitled "It Takes a Village: Music From Around the Globe."
Deriving primarily from 20th century works, the concert features pieces spanning a few continents and several languages, all of which can be "traced to local events that called for joining of voices to celebrate, commemorate or mourn."
One contemporary composition features a deliberately medieval style and text derived from the 12th-century Spanish "Codex Calixtinus." It is actually written in a Spanish gibberish of sorts, with roots in Italian, Portuguese and an anonymous French "chanson."
Yet another selection comes from the portfolio of the great Bulgarian composer Georgi Dimitrov, whose works have gone on to attain "classic" status and are included in the permanent repertoire of Bulgarian choirs.
Two pieces are excerpts from Robert Convery's choral cantata "Songs of Children." Based on nine poems written by children at the Czech "Terezin" concentration camp, the cantata was originally commissioned and premiered by the New York Concert Singers. The composer wrote that he dedicated the cantata to the memory of all children who perished in the Holocaust.
The 22 members of the Chamber Singers, featuring the inaugural performance of five freshman and one graduate student, will include the vocal and percussion stylings of student soloists Diana Blank '08, Andy Reza '09, Sinny Wang '08, Tom Wang '08 and Terry Wilson '08.
Tickets for the 8 p.m. performance on Friday are $3 for Dartmouth students and are available now at the Hopkins Center Box Office.
The concert will conclude with Joan Szymko's "It Takes a Village," inspired by a West African text and lending its title and setting to the performance.
As Szymko sought to "embody the cultural concept" behind the title of her work, she wrote: "It is truly all the individual parts linked and working together that create and support the whole. The four vocal rhythms in the main portion of the work, each with its own character and function, are essential to creating the unique energy and movement. Only when they are sung together does a truly joyful spirit arise."
The Dartmouth Chamber Singers will undoubtedly bring that spirit to Rollins Chapel this weekend.
