With an appetite for heart-and-soul-warming music after a cold, cold winter, the Chester River Chorale is primed for a springtime romp down Memory Lane as it presents Play It Again, Sammy at 8 p.m. Friday evening, March 20, and 3 p.m. Saturday afternoon, March 21 at the Presbyterian Church of Chestertown.
The program, mostly composed of songs sung in the Chorale’s past 15 years, is a salute to past and present artistic directors and accompanists, including Sam Marshall, the present accompanist, who will indeed be playing many of the songs again.
“Play It Again, Sammy is much more than an anniversary concert,” said Douglas D. Cox, the Chorale’s artistic director. “It is a reunion of past musicians who have had a vital role in the Chorale’s success. The repertoire was selected with the helpful input of the entire CRC membership, a few of whom were there at the founding of the organization.”
Among the guest artists will be the Chorale’s previous artistic director, Ann Turpin, who will take the baton to lead the singers in two movements of Beethoven’s Mass in C, while previous accompanist Jonathan Emmons will play the organ accompaniment. For his part in the Mass, Cox will relinquish the podium to sing the tenor solos.
Another previous accompanist, Kate Bennett, will join Marshall on songs calling for four-handed piano talent.
Local guest artists Cantor Gary Schiff and Karen Somerville will provide voices familiar to Chorale concert goers. Western shore veterans of past performances will be soprano Janet Hjelmgren and contralto Alison Enokian. Also from across the Bay, baritone Spencer Adamson will make his first CRC appearance.
The program opens with It’s a Grand Night for Singing from Rogers’ and Hammerstein’s State Fair first sung by the Chorale in 2008. It closes with An Irish Blessing, sung numerous times as a closing CRC piece.
In between there will be contrasting Leonard Bernstein works drawn from his haunting Chichester Psalms and from West Side Story, his smash Broadway take on Romeo and Juliet; along with contrasting pieces from Irving Berlin, the rollicking I Love a Piano and the anthem-like God Bless America; and a half-dozen others, including Jerome Kern’s poignant ballad All the Things You Are.
The 80-plus members of the Chorale are amateur singers drawn mainly from Kent and Queen Anne’s counties. No audition is required to join and sing for the joy of it under the professional guidance of Cox and Marshall.
The Chester River Chorale is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization funded in part by the presenting sponsor ship of Yerkes Construction Co., and grantors including the Hedgelawn Foundation and the Kent County Arts Council, and by an operating grant from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency dedicated to cultivating a vibrant cultural community where the arts thrive.
The CRC’s Mission is to provide opportunity and inspiration for amateur singers to strive for artistic excellence. CRC performances entertain diverse audiences and enrich the cultural life of the community.
Visit www.chesterriverchorale.org for more information, or call 410 928 5566.
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