The Month of Maying: college choirs

You may dispute the ‘Maying,’ in this heading, but it is certainly a month with a college choir focus. If you stretch the month just four days, starting four days ago at University of La Verne, you have every college choir in our area in concert in just five weeks.

The Pomona College Glee Club sang Thursday and will sing again Saturday afternoon, at 1:15 p.m. on 4 May, promising chamber music by Tallis, Hensel, Brahms, Verdi, Lauridsen, etc. Also Saturday, at 8 p.m. on 4 May, the Claremont Orchestra and Concert Choir will bring to Claremont the first of two performances of the Haydn oratorio ‘The Creation,’ with the second performance at 3 p.m. this Sunday, 5 May.

On Friday 10 May, at 12:15 p.m., the Friday at Noon concerts of the Claremont Colleges will feature the other chamber sized ensemble of the colleges, the Claremont Chamber Choir, in a program including music by Beethoven, Britten, Fanny Mendelssohn, Whitacre and others, also in Claremont.

The next day, on Saturday, 11 May, at 7:30 p.m., the Concert Choir and Ensemble Singers of Chaffey College are singing a program titled ‘If Music Be the Food of Love,’ that includes music by Tallis, Palestrina, Morley, Sweelinck, Handel, Mendelssohn, Dickau and Hogan at the Chaffey College Theatre (call 909-652-6067 for ticket and address information). You may remember a program with the same title but wholly different performers in February, a coincidence that also includes a couple of composers in common.

The next Tuesday night, on 14 May, the University of La Verne choral ensembles will be holding their Spring Choral Concert at 7:30 p.m. in Morgan Auditorium at ULV. Program details are unavailable at this time.

The western end of the area between two colleges brings up the end of this spate of concerts with Cal Poly Pomona’s Kellogg Chamber Singers and Concert Choir singing at 8:00 p.m. on Thursday, 30 May, and the Mount San Antonio College Chamber Singers and Concert Choir singing two concerts, first at 8:00 p.m. on Saturday, 31 May, then again at 8:00 p.m., Saturday, 1 June. Details regarding these programs are not yet available.

There you have it – seven colleges, twelve choral ensembles, and eleven concerts in 35 days.

Enjoy!