Walt Cunningham, director of the Dartmouth College Gospel Choir, has compiled a repertoire of beloved gospel and popular songs over his 11-year tenure at the College. His innovative choir will perform these “greatest hits,” as he called them, and others in a Sunday performance in Spaulding Auditorium.
The show was originally planned as a reunion performance with choir alumni, Cunningham said, but the choir could not organize enough alumni in time. He said he hopes to perform the reunion show next fall.
Instead, this show will present beloved songs of the choir, featuring “heavy hitters of gospel music,” he said.
“We’re definitely doing the big hits that have come out of the gospel industry in past years, such as Israel Houghton and Kirk Franklin,” he said.
Besides performing popular gospel songs, the choir will also explore other genres of music, Jennifer Evans ’17, a soprano in the choir, said.
“We do traditional gospel songs,” Evans said, “but Walt has changed them so much that the message is still there, but the sound is so different.”
Cunningham alluded to the show’s “surprises,” including a readaptation of a current popular song that he hopes will incorporate audience participation. Cunningham declined to comment on this aspect of the show, so not to spoil the surprise.
Bryan Robinson ’16, a baritone, said that the choir’s diverse repertoire allows members not to feel “confined to one genre.”
The show, like other spring shows, will have a “special quality” to it, Robinson said, because it will be many members’ last performance.
The choir has prepared for this performance since last term, with biweekly rehearsals and section-specific rehearsals for each part of the choir.
“We’ve been having a lot of sectionals because there are a lot of differences between the parts,” Evans said. “If each part isn’t perfect, it is hard to get them all to merge well.”
Evans, who had been a member of a non-gospel choir for several years before attending Dartmouth, said the passion and abilities of the choir’s singers stunned her.
“There is so much enthusiasm and it feels just like one big family,” Evans said. “You have to put in a lot of effort, but the end result is just amazing.”
Longtime choir members who have previously performed some of the songs help newer members along by telling them stories of past concerts, Evans said.
Alto singer Danielle Piacentile ’17 said that the choir, composed of undergraduates, graduate students and community members, opens every rehearsal by discussing their weeks.
Piacentile first learned of the choir fall term while supporting a friend at a performance.
“It was incredible — I was so excited to be there and that just made me want to join it even more,” Piacentile said. “It’s a nice space to learn about singing, and it doesn’t matter how good you are. It’s just a space to express yourself and not hold yourself back.”
Other members said they value the experience of learning a different style of music.
“I was interested in trying a different style of singing,” Robinson said. “I was familiar with gospel music, but I didn’t really listen to gospel music, so it was a nice change of pace.”
The performance will take place Sunday at 2 p.m.
