MANSFIELD, PA— Area singers are invited to join the Mansfield University Festival Chorus for the spring semester. The Chorus, directed by Peggy Dettwiler, will meet on Tuesday evenings at 7 p.m. in Steadman Theatre beginning January 24.
The chorus will prepare for two performances of the Five Mystical Songs and Dona Nobis Pacem by Ralph Vaughan Williams with faculty soloists, Todd Ranney and Alissa Rose, and accompanied by full orchestra.
These two concerts will be sung in memory of Justina Sechrist, a long-time member of the chorus and a voice student at Mansfield, who tragically passed away following a car accident last May.
She was also an avid historian of the Civil War. Vaughan Williams’s Dona Nobis Pacem, composed in 1936, features his plea for peace by referring to recent wars during the growing fears of a new one. The work includes three poems by Walt Whitman about the Civil War.
The concerts, to be held on April 8 at 7:30 p.m. and April 9 at 2:30 p.m., will help to generate funds for a voice scholarship in Sechrist’s memory.
The Festival Chorus meets on Tuesday evenings in Steadman Theatre, 7-9 p.m. Participation in the rehearsals and performances is open to all persons on the university campus, high school students and community singers. Singers only need to vocalize for placement in the soprano, alto, tenor or bass sections.
Sectional rehearsals will take place on Thursdays from 5-5:50 p.m. Volunteer members are encouraged, but not required, to participate in sectional rehearsals.
Music should be purchased in advance at the Mountie Den campus bookstore.
For more information, call (570)662-4721 or e-mail pdettwil@mansfield.edu