Pacific’s choirs prepare for their annual fall concert
This year’s fall choral concert will be a little different than previous years, but director Dr. Katy Green says that she’s excited for the journey the ensemble will take the audience on this year, which will stem beyond their performance next Friday.
Audience members will be invited into the progress of the chamber choir, who Green proudly explained were accepted to sing at the Oregon Music Educator’s Association conference in January. “We’re only one of two collegiate ensembles in Oregon that were chosen. So, their entire semester has kind of been in preparation for the January conference, and so for this concert for chamber, it really is sort of being treated almost as a progress check that we get to invite our audience to sort of be a part of.”
Design by JeanneAnn Faris Comiskey
Although concerts typically function as the culmination of a semester of hard work for Pacific’s ensembles, this year the chamber will be performing pieces that they’ll continue to perfect for January. This is new for them, but Green is excited to bring the audience along for the ride. “I’m excited about kind of just challenging the norm of things that have to be refined for them to be shared with others, I think it’s okay to celebrate progress,” she says.
One of their biggest “progress pieces” is titled, “Into the Light, Deliver Me,” which Green describes as a very challenging work. This is because, “throughout the piece, certain members of the ensemble are singing actually in a different rhythmic meter… The choir literally splits at one point and half the choir is in one asymmetrical meter, and then the other half of the choir is in a non-asymmetrical meter.”
In spite of these difficulties, Green has nothing but praise for her students.
Aside from providing an interesting duality, this piece also represents the larger idea of conflicting forces coexisting and even working together to create something bigger than themselves. “I do love the alliteration of the fact that we can all be so wildly different but still live in one measure together, but still live in one world together, and I think it’s kind of that epitome of utilizing our differences to make something gorgeous,” Green says.
The concert choir’s performance brings a different tone, and has been titled “Dreams of Who We Can Be.” It contains another one of Green’s favorite pieces this semester, “Paper Boats”. The choir will be creating their own paper boats with their names, and a piece of information about themselves that isn’t obvious, but they would like people to know. Green says this relates to the piece, which aims to create a sense of childlike enthusiasm as it says “I hope someone will find them and know who I am, I launch my paper boats and look up to the sky.”
This song presents a story that centers around who we are, and who we aspire to be. Through this song, they hope to communicate “Dreams of who we can be, dreams of who we are, and sharing that with the audience and letting them know it’s okay for us to think big.”
Through both the concert and chamber choirs, Green hopes to take the audience on a journey that will be personal and help to bring everyone together, which she says is one of her favorite parts of choir. “One person with a group of people is incredibly powerful, and that’s what I love about choir. It takes that individuality and then we take all of our strengths and we come up with something that is organic and real and you never really know what’s going to happen until it happens, and there’s something immensely beautiful about that chance.”
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