A List
3/7/05

LAURENTIAN SINGERS TO PERFORM HOME CONCERT

CANTON – Following their successful tour of New Orleans, Louisiana, during 
spring break, St. Lawrence University's Laurentian Singers will give a home 
concert on Wednesday, March 23, at 8 p.m. in Gunnison Memorial Chapel on 
campus. The performance is open to the public, free of charge. 
	Every Laurentian Singers tour concert includes arrangements of 
popular and world music. This year's selections include the first Best 
Song winner at the Academy Awards in 1934, "The Continental," in an 
elegantly swinging arrangement. Elvis Presley's big hit of 1961, "Can't 
Help Falling in Love with You," will be sung in an arrangement by Director 
Barry Torres.
	The Songs of Nature, op.63 is a suite of five songs for a cappella 
mixed choir by the great Czech composer Antonin Dvorak, known more as a 
composer of instrumental music (such as the New World Symphony, nr. 9). 
These choral vignettes evoke poignant responses to nature in all its guises. 
As with all of his music Dvorak displays his particular Czech flair in these 
beautifully written choral gems.
	Also, the Laurentians will sing two 20th-century American settings 
of late-Renaissance English poetry. Halsey Stevens' Like as the Culver on 
the Baréd Bough is a gently moving setting of Edmund Spenser's sonnet of 
absent love. In contrast to this is a setting of John Donne's Holy Sonnet 
VII, At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners by Williametta Spenser. Spenser 
won the 1968 Choral Competition of the Southern California Vocal Association 
with this piece.
	Interspersed through the program are sacred works of beauty and 
grace. The program opens with Randall Thompson's famous Alleluia, a work 
of solemn light written in 1940 when the world was being enveloped in 
Axis darkness. O magnum mysterium is one of Minnesota composer Morten 
Lauridsen's most performed works. Its lush harmonies and simple melodic 
gestures are typical of Lauridsen's highly expressive style. In a different 
sacred mode, the Laurentians will sing the spiritual Sometimes I Feel by 
the dynamic duo of choral arranging, Alice Parker and Robert Shaw.
	The concert will end with a tribute to New Orleans. Accompanied by 
a band made up of members of the choir and accompanist Barbara Phillips-Farley, 
the Laurentians will sing The Band's hit song "Acadian Driftwood," which tells 
the story of the exile of the Acadians out of Nova Scotia to the Cajun 
country in Louisiana. "Laissez les Bons Temps Rouler" will give a rocking 
close to the program.
	The Laurentian Singers have won wide acclaim since the ensemble 
was founded in 1946. In addition to their many performances on campus and 
in the community, the 36-voice ensemble has toured extensively throughout 
the eastern United States, Canada, Europe, Central and South America, 
Romania and the former Soviet Union. Last year, under the direction of 
Torres, the Laurentians returned to Puerto Rico, singing for enthusiastic 
packed audiences and meeting choirs across the island. The group's 
wide-ranging repertoire, drawn from musics of many styles and countries, 
reflects the spirit of the liberal arts experience at St. Lawrence. The 
choir is composed of undergraduate students who represent a wide variety 
of academic majors and interests.

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