SU Women’s Choir hosts fifth annual Invitational Women’s Choir Festival Oct. 28, culminates with free concert

SU Women’s Choir hosts fifth annual Invitational Women’s Choir Festival Oct. 28, culminates with free concertOctober 16, 2006Jaime Winne Alvarezjlwinne@syr.edu

The Syracuse University Women’s Choir, under the direction of College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) instructor Barbara M. Tagg, will host the Fifth Annual Invitational Women’s Choir Festival on Saturday, Oct. 28, at VPA’s Rose, Jules R. and Stanford S. Setnor School of Music. The daylong event of workshops and rehearsals will culminate in a free public concert at 2 p.m. in the Rose and Jules R. Setnor Auditorium, Crouse College. Parking is available in Irving Garage.

Choirs participating in the festival include the Westhill High School Women’s Ensemble, under the direction of Joseph Buchmann, and the Cicero-North Syracuse High School Women’s Choir, under the direction of Caryn Patterson. Martha Sullivan of New York City is guest composer-in-residence. Sullivan is a faculty member at New York University and a member of the Gregg Smith Singers.

The public concert will feature the participating choirs individually and a combined choir of about 125 voices. “O World,” a choral work based on a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, will be premiered at the event. The work was commissioned to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Invitational Women’s Choir Festival.

Concert repertoire will include selections by Aaron Copland, Catherine Bennett, Gabriel Faure, Walter Hawkins and Martin Sirvatka, David L. Brunner, Veljo Tormis, Lowell Mason, and Paul Caldwell and Sean Ivory.

For more information, contact Tagg at (315) 443-5750.