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November 30, 2012

Susquehanna Valley Youth Chorale performs Sunday in Lewisburg

The Daily Item

LEWISBURG — The Susquehanna Valley Youth Chorale will present its winter concert at 3 p.m. Sunday in First Presbyterian Church, 18 Market St.

In a candlelit setting, the chorale’s three levels will present “Illuminate” in the church sanctuary. Their musical works will reflect images of love, tradition, beauty, laughter and magic. They are directed by Valerie Flamini Caldwell.

Tickets are available at the door or online at svcmusic.org at a cost of $10 for adults and $5 for students. Children 6 and younger attend for free. People also may call the SVC office at 547-0455 about tickets.

The young women of the chorale’s high school Valley Singers will open the program with “Ubi Caritas” by Ola Gjeilo, with a sound medieval and contemporary using unison Latin texts that broaden into modern harmonies. Gjeilo is a young Norwegian composer now based in the United States. The high school men will join the women in the medieval English song “Good Cheer,” and the Scottish lullaby “Baloo Baleerie” featuring a men’s quartet.

Remembering tradition, the middle-school-aged Camerata singers will perform “Unending Flame” by Paul Carey, a piece commissioned by the Michigan State University Children’s Choir that celebrates the flame of Hanukkah. In “Hanukkah Holiday,” the young Preparatory Chorus of the chorale will sing the arrangement of popular youth composer Linda Swears.

The focus turns to beauty with Camerata performing “Candlelight Carol,” a work by British composer John Rutter, and the always popular “Carol of the Bells.” Ending this section will be “Beautiful December” by Amy Bernon.

The Preparatory Chorus will offer up the infamous “Chipmunk Christmas Song,” featuring a boys trio, and letting the audience know that “All I Want is……Nuttin’.”

For a magical climax, all three levels of the Susquehanna Valley Youth Chorale will unite for an arrangement of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” first sung by Judy Garland back in 1944. “This Little Light of Mine,” a children’s gospel song from the 1920s, will end the “Illuminate.”

The youth chorale, an educational outreach of the Susquehanna Valley Chorale, offers two sessions a year, fall in Lewisburg and winter in Selinsgrove, and is experiencing its largest fall Lewisburg session. It draws singers from Williamsport to Middleburg and from Mifflinburg to Shamokin. More than 100 singers participated last season in sessions in Lewisburg and Selinsgrove, performing a fall Veterans Day Youth Benefit Concert and a winter World Music Concert. Plans are under way for a Youth Choral Camp in Lewisburg next summer.

New singer auditions for those in grades two to 12 for the Selinsgrove winter session will be held Dec. 15 in Sharon Lutheran Church, 120 S. Market St., Selinsgrove. Rehearsals begin in early January and culminate in a March 24 concert in Zion Lutheran Church, Sunbury.

For information or to schedule an audition, contact Coleen Renshaw at rrenshaw@ptd.net, 837-0634 or svcmusic.org.

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