SU Women’s Choir to host invitational festival Nov.13

Event to culminate with free concert featuring CNY choirs

The Syracuse University Women’s Choir, under the direction of Barbara M. Tagg, faculty member in the Rose, Jules R. and Stanford S. Setnor School of Music in the College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA), will host the eighth annual Invitational Women’s Choir Festival on Saturday, Nov. 13, at the Setnor School. The daylong event of rehearsals and master classes will culminate in a free public concert at 2 p.m. in the Rose and Jules R. Setnor Auditorium, Crouse College. Free parking is available in the Irving Garage.

Invited choirs include the Skaneateles (N.Y.) High School Women’s Chamber Choir, under the direction of Micheal Kringer, and the Cazenovia (N.Y.) High School Women’s Choir, under the direction of Teresa Campbell.

The public concert will feature the choirs in individual performances, as well as a combined, 100-voice choir. Under their directors, the choirs will perform a variety of works, including ones by Craig Hella Johnson, Eric Whitacre, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lowell Mason, Ludwig van Beethoven, Randall Thompson, Amy Bernon and Jerome W. Malek.

The combined choirs will perform under the direction of featured guest conductor Cara Tasher, left, director of choral activities and associate professor of voice at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. The choirs will perform “How Can I Keep from Singing” by Robert Lowry, and “It Takes a Village” by Joan Szymko.

Tasher has conducted choirs in Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico and the United States. She has studied at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, the University of Texas at Austin, La Sorbonne and Northwestern University.

For more information, contact Tagg at (315) 443-5750 or btagg@syr.edu.