Performances by the state’s top collegiate choirs, including Minnesota State University, Mankato’s Concert Choir, will highlight the 2009 Minnesota Collegiate Choral Festival Saturday, Nov. 14, at Bethel University in St. Paul.
The Minnesota State Mankato Concert Choir, directed by David Dickau, is one of five choirs selected in blind auditions to perform in the Star of the North Festival Concert Series, sponsored by the American Choral Directors Association of Minnesota and the F. Melius Christiansen Endowment Fund Committee.
Other participating groups include the Northwestern College Concert Choir, Saint John’s University Men’s Chorus, University of Minnesota Duluth University Singers and University of St. Thomas Chamber Singers.
The choirs will perform individually before joining voices for a massed choir performance. The Collegiate Festival Concert begins at 7 p.m. in Bethel’s Benson Great Hall.
The 63-member Minnesota State Mankato choir will perform “Psaume 96” (sung in French) by 17th-century composer Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck; “O sacrum convivium,” a Latin liturgical text set by contemporary Lithuanian composer Vytautus Miškinis; a setting of E. E. Cumming's “I carry your heart” by Dickau; and “Twa Tanbou,” a Haitian piece with Creole text and complex rhythms.
Craig Jessop, head of the music department at Utah State University and former director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, will direct the massed choir, which will premiere a piece by composer Eric William Barnum, who earned a master’s degree in choral conducting from Minnesota State Mankato.
Dickau, Minnesota State Mankato director of choral activities and music faculty member since 1991, recently received the university’s Distinguished Faculty Scholar Award.
His published compositions appear in a number of catalogues, and he has composed commissioned pieces for choral festivals, colleges, universities, community choirs, churches and schools throughout the world.
Dickau’s “Dresden Canticles,” premiered in Leipzig, Dresden and Prague in 1998, was composed in honor of the rebuilding of the Frauenkirche in Dresden, Germany. “View from the Air” was commissioned by the Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh Foundation in honor of the 70th anniversary of Lindbergh’s historic trans-Atlantic flight.
Tickets for the concert are $25 each, and a special ticket, which includes a CD of the concert, is available for $75. The additional fee goes to the F. Melius Christiansen Endowment Fund, which annually provides scholarships to Minnesota choral directors.
Those who want more information or wish to order tickets may go to the festival's Web site or may call (651) 638-6333 or (866) 424-4849. More information about Dickau and the Minnesota State Mankato Concert Choir also can be found at the site.
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