NATCHITOCHES – The Northwestern State University Chamber Choir will perform on Tuesday, Nov. 1 at 7:30 p.m. in Magale Recital Hall. Admission is free and open to the public. A livestream of the concert will be available at capa.nsula.edu/livestream. Dr. Nicholaus B. Cummins will conduct the choir.
This concert is called “The Poetry of Passion: Songs of Love and Loss” and deals with music from both spiritual and secular sources. There are four sections to the concert, and each section has three selections. The Chamber Choir will perform selections in Italian, Spanish, Latin and Swedish. This concert will also be used when the choir goes on a recruiting tour in January at Louisiana high schools.
The Northwestern Chamber Choir, founded in 1987, is the flagship choral ensemble at Northwestern State. The Northwestern Chamber Choir is comprised of 34 undergraduates encompassing a variety of different majors throughout the university. The choir frequently collaborates with composers and conductors for projects including “For a Breath of Ecstasy,” commissioned from Michael Trotta and “The Falling Stars” commissioned from Richard Burchard. The Northwestern Chamber Choir was the featured choir at the 2017 Louisiana Music Educators Association conference and was selected to perform at the 2019 Eighth National Collegiate Choral Conference National Conference in Maryland. Last year, they placed in the top four of the Leonardo da Vinci Choral Competition in Florence, Italy. The Chamber Choir has also placed second in the Laurea Mundi Budapest in Budapest, Hungary and Second and Best Interpretation in the AVE VERUM ICC in Baden, Austria. Cummins and the Northwestern Chamber Choir have been invited to premiere the “Stabat Mater” by composer Richard Burchard in London, England, at the Southwark Cathedral in June 2023. The Chamber Choir will release a CD of Burchard’s works this semester.
