One of the nation’s most celebrated university choirs will spread joy throughout Florida this month during the 2012 Capital University Chapel Choir Tour, How Great Our Joy, February 25 through March 1.
The 67-member choir will perform at six venues in six days, continuing its tradition of taking the powerful messages of joy, hope, and positive social change to thousands of people all over the world — from Carnegie Hall and the Chicago Opera House to European cathedrals and school music halls in South Africa.
The tour will open with a performance at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music Spring Choral Invitational Saturday, February 25, at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, in Coral Gables. It will continue with stops in Pinecrest, Naples, Sarasota and The Villages, and then conclude with a final concert at Lutheran Church of the Cross, in St. Petersburg. All performances are free and open to the public. No tickets are required. A reception will follow each performance, and Capital University admission counselors will be available to talk with students interested in learning more about Capital.
How Great Our Joy is a joyous celebration featuring music that reflects joy in its many facets — exuberant laughter and lighthearted dancing, quiet smiles and fervent gladness, and above all, jubilant song. The program includes William Byrd’s Sing Joyfully, Ko Matshushita’s Jubilate Deo; Nikolaie Golovanov’s Otche Nash; Felix Mendelssohn’s Richet Mich, Gott; Prayer by René Clausen, as well as Craig Courtney and Chapel Choir director Dr. Lynda Hasseler’s arrangement of I Will Rise; Craig Hella Johnson’s arrangement of Dolly Parton’s Light of a Clear Blue Morning, and Craig Courtney’s How Great Our Joy, for which the program is named. The concert will also feature several songs from South Africa performed as a continuing celebration of the choir’s Wondrous Love concert tour to South Africa in May 2011.
Chapel Choir is the Conservatory of Music’s most advanced choir. It performs a variety of sacred and secular choral literature, including motets, choral/orchestral works, spirituals, gospel music, carols, traditional music, and selections for women’s chorus and men’s chorus as well as music from Eastern Europe, Africa, Japan and from Latin and South America.
The complete list of tour stops follows:
- Saturday, February 25, Frost School of Music Spring Choral Invitational, 7:30 pm, St. Thomas Episcopal Church, located at 5690 N. Kendall Drive, Coral Gables, Fla., 305-661-3436
- Sunday, February 26, 7 pm, Christ the King Lutheran Church, located at 11295 SW 57th Ave., Pinecrest, Fla., 305-665-5063
- Monday, February 27, 7 pm, Moorings Presbyterian Church, located at 791 Harbour Drive, in Naples, Fla., 239-261-1487
- Tuesday, February 28, 7 pm, Trinity Lutheran Church, located at 2200 26th St. W. Bradenton, Fla., 941-747-3081
- Wednesday, February 29, 4 pm, Hope Lutheran Church, located at 250 Avenida Los Angelos, The Villages, Fla., 352-750-2321
- Thursday, March 1, 6:30 pm, Lutheran Church of the Cross, 4545 Chancellor St. NE, St. Petersburg, Fla., 727-525-8364
Learn more about the choir and its upcoming tour on Capital’s website at www.capital.edu/florida-tour, where you can listen to and watch a recent performance and browse through a photo gallery of the choir’s performance at the 2011 Christmas Festival. Hear directly from Dr. Hasseler and her students by following their blog at chapelchoirtour.capital.edu.
###
Download a high-resolution image of the Capital University Chapel Choir (7.70M/JPEG).
Contact: Nichole Johnson
Director of media relations and communications
Capital University
614-236-6945
Cell: 614-440-9158