Three USD choirs collaborate for final concert of the year

Three musical groups at the University of South Dakota will wrap up the spring semester with a final concert Saturday, April 21 at 3 p.m. in Aalfs Auditorium in Slagle Hall.

The concert will feature the Men’s and Women’s Choir, the Concert Choir as well as the Vocal Jazz Group.

David Holdhusen, director of choral activites, said the choirs usually do a major work with the orchestra, but with the orchestra playing with Kansas this year, they had to do something different.

“The chamber singers are providing the chorus for the opera, which is the following weekend. So this time I had just the two choirs in the concert – The Concert Chorus and the Men’s and Women’s Chorus,” Holdhusen said.

“The Songs of Hope” set is five pieces that the Men’s and Women’s Choir is doing and the “Songs of Faith” set is a set of five pieces for the Concert Choir and then the Vocal Jazz Group will perform in between them, Holdhusen said.

“The first half of the show, with the Men’s and Women’s chorus, is uplifting songs. They’re songs about dreams, going off and finding new life and things like that,” Holdhusen said. “The second half is ‘Songs of Faith.’”

The Vocal Jazz group is student-run and they came together last fall, Holdhusen said.

“I’ve given them this opportunity to showcase the work they’ve done,” Holdhusen said.

Holdhusen said their music is going to be completely different than the others.

“The others are more formal, traditional choral music where this will be vocal jazz,” Holdhusen said. “It’s purely jazz music – not anything like the other music around them.”

Senior Kristin Edwards, a vocal performance major as well as member of the Men’s and Women’s Choir, said the music selected for the concert should highlight the talents of the choirs.

“The music that Dr. Holdhusen typically picks for the Men’s and Women’s Choir is music that is going to sound good with a big group of people because it is the community group,” Edwards said.

Edwards, who is also in charge of the vocal jazz group, said Dr. Holdusen typically has a theme for the concert.

“Most of the music he picked for this concert reflects that theme,” Edwards said. “I always love the music that he picks. He always seems to know what we want to sing.”

The current student-run vocal jazz group was started by Edwards.

“When I transferred to USD they didn’t have a jazz ensemble and I wanted to find people who liked vocal jazz,” Edwards said. “I think that vocal jazz is such a cool thing and it seemed so strange that this department has such a great jazz program but didn’t have a vocal jazz ensemble.”

Edwards said she picked up some music and found some friends that wanted to participate in the group.

“Dr. Holdhusen approached me and asked me if we wanted to perform at this concert and so it’s turning out really well,” Edwards said.

The vocal jazz group is called Swing Set and has eight members – they’re not from any particular choir and most of them are music majors, Edwards said.

The vocal jazz group hasn’t stuck to the theme as much because they went with pieces they had already learned, Edwards said.

“We picked four pieces, two of them are old jazz standards. They’re classical vocal jazz pieces,” Edwards said. “Then we’re doing a piece called ‘I Feel Good’ by James Brown. It’s really upbeat and completely different. We end with ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’ which is from a musical. It’s a really traditional goodbye piece to end a set with.”

Junior Rachel Poss, concert choir member, said she likes the pieces the choir is doing for the upcoming concert.

“They’re all based on the ‘Songs of Faith’ by Basler, but they all have a variety,” Poss said. “A couple are very up-tempo and then some of them are slow and lyrical. It’s nice to sing a variety even though they’re based off of the same idea.”

The past two years this concert would usually be with the orchestra, Poss said, but now a piece with just the Men’s and Women’s Chorus and the organ will be done.

“I think the organ is actually a great change now that Aalfs is open,” Poss said. “We have this huge organ so it’ll still be a great experience.”

Reach reporter Emily Niebrugge at Emily.K. [email protected].