Touring Program
| Rossini | Barber of Seville Overture | arr. Runswick |
| Tchaikovsky | Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy | arr. Funk |
| ABBA | Dancing Queen | arr. Sharon |
| Satie | Gymnopedie No. 1 | arr. A. Winters |
| Joel | And So it Goes | arr. Chilcott |
| Morrison | Moondance | arr. Ajack |
| Folk Tune | Down in the River to Pray | arr. Lawson |
| Arlen | Over the Rainbow | arr. Turner |
| Intermission | ||
| Rossini | William Tell Overture | arr. Eschliman |
| Orzabal | Mad World | arr. A. Winters |
| Bernstein | Somewhere | arr. Edgerton |
| Rimsky-Korsakov | Flight of the Bumblebee | arr. Swingle |
| Lennon/McCartney | Blackbird | arr. Runswick |
| Sondheim | Send in the Clowns | arr. Meader |
| Paich/Porcaro | Africa | arr. Crenshaw |
| Fogarty | Proud Mary | arr. Sharon |
Should Have Been Choral touring program
Program Notes
Remember the mix-tape?
In the 1980s and 1990s, I considered myself the master of the mix tape. I’d sit up all night, pondering what order the songs should go in, how they should fit together, how they should lead into each other, what they should say to the listener. I’d craft, and plan, and time the selections and then search for that perfect 90-second piece to jam in at the end of Side A. I paid special attention to transitions from song to song, wanting smooth travel between selections. But once in a while, I would jar the listener with an unexpected pairing that would cause initial brow-furrowing but eventually the surprised head-nodding of “Huh. You CAN pair Kiss with Debussy. It actually works.”
Of course, digital music has changed all that; the art of the mix-tape is lost. But sometimes, sometimes, as I’ve got my iPod on shuffle, one of those unexpected-but-brilliant pairings will occur just by happenstance. And I smile, nod knowingly and wish I still had a working cassette player so that I could put it on a mix-tape.
Though this is our third outing with the Should Have Been Choral concept, I think it is our best one, because it is as close to a 21st century mix-tape as I can get. Most of the music on the concert should be familiar; some selections because you’ve known the song for years, some selections because you’ve heard it once or twice and one selection because you just heard Adam sing it on American Idol (a rather serendipitous occurrence since we first sang it in 2007).
But all of it should, we hope, make you re-think the choral art.
The choral art (especially the unaccompanied choral art) too often ties singers and, by extension, their audiences, into a straight-jacket of “shoulds.” One should always sing serious music. One should always be edified by the music. One should only sing known and respected composers or new and unknown, but certainly scholarly, composers. One should never, never, ever attend a choral concert and feel like grooving. Or jamming. Or head-banging. Or doing the frug.
But choral music can be anything. The essence of choral music is voices working together to achieve the expected, the unexpected, the sublime, the ridiculous.
And that’s what Should Have Been Choral is all about. Enjoy.
Dr. Krista Lang Blackwood, Artistic Director