MANSFIELD, PA—The Mansfield University Music Department will
present the annual Fall Choral Collage on Sunday, October 26, at 2:30 p.m. in Steadman Theatre.
The concert is free and open to the public. Due to the popularity of this event, audience members are urged to arrive early.
The program, produced and conducted by Peggy Dettwiler, director of Choral Activities, will feature the Mansfield University Festival Chorus, Women’s Chorus, Men’s Chorus, Mansfieldians, Chamber Singers and the Concert Choir.
The program will includes works by Mozart, Schumann, Verdi, Holst and Gershwin, plus a Hebrew love song, a rousing gospel selection and two spirituals.
In addition, two compositions by Kenneth Dake, director of Music 
at New York City’s historic Marble Collegiate Church will be featured. Dake has been the director of music at Marble Collegiate Church, where Norman Vincent Peale was once minister, since 1996. There, he oversees a multi-choir program known for its extraordinary diversity and musical excellence. He conducts the Marble Sanctuary Choir, an elite professional vocal ensemble of 24 voices and is the founder and director of a dynamic volunteer chorus, the Marble Festival of Voices.
Dake, who has collaborated with Dettwiler at Marble on several occasions and is also a fan of Mansfield’s choral program, will attend the concert. The Festival Chorus will perform his setting of Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing and the Concert Choir will premiere his original composition, Further Goals, set to a text by Emily Dickinson. The text relates perfectly to college students as they are finding their path in life.
Also, choral graduate student, Darrick King of Brandywine, MD, will make his Steadman debut conducting the Festival Chorus and Barbara Winters of Wellsboro with perform the Verdi opera duet, Libiamo ne’ lieti calici, with Richard Weston of Dubose. Victoria Nance, Mitchell Sensenig and Kyle Rusk will accompany the various ensembles at the piano.
The Choral Collage is sponsored in part by student activity fees.