Timothy Johnson
Lantern Staff
“I think the highlight is that everyone is combined and at the same time they all kind of have their special moment, and I think the other thing is that it’s pretty special that there are some solo opportunities,” Chad Ingram, assistant professor of vocal Music at Butler, said, explaining what the highlights are for the upcoming vocal music concert. “And at a four year university or more, it would usually just be the graduate level students who would get those chances, but our freshmen and sophomores, since this is a two-year program, have those opportunities, so I think that giving opportunities to younger students that they may not get at their age in a four-year university or grad school program. And we have the opportunity to perform this with a small orchestra.”
Butler’s vocal music concert, “From Page to Stage,” is coming soon on Thursday, March 7 and Friday, March 8. All of the performing arts groups are participating in the vocal music concert, including the Headliners, Chamber Singers, Butler Ladies, the Concert Choir and the A Cappella singers.
The groups will sing “Jubilate Deo” by Dan Forrest, which is considered to be a master work, sort of a symphony for singers. It is divided into seven sections called movements, and each movement is in a different language; these languages are Latin, Hebrew, Mandarin Chinese, Zulu, Spanish and English, which has required plenty of practice of the proper pronunciation of these many languages by the students. Each of these movements has different cultural aspects. For instance, there is a lot of percussion in the movement sung in Zulu, and the movement sung in Hebrew is more emotional. However, the rest of the movements are supposed to feel more joyful. In total, these seven movements add up to about 45 minutes in length.
On average, the students have practiced eight to nine hours a week to prepare for “From Page to Stage.” This practice consists of the students’ class time and their hard work outside of class. The groups practice together and each ensemble does additional practice separate from the whole group on top of the larger group practice.
“Sometimes the weather is a little tough this time of year, so it’s hard to hold extra rehearsals; that’s really the only setback,” Ingram said, responding to whether their had been any problems throughout the process of preparing for the concert. “With a work as complex as this, the students have had to work hard to bring their individual practice together.”
“I think the most difficult part about it has been us working on it on our own time and then coming together and then join everything that we worked on separately and make it into one,” Alanis Balza, a member of Headliners, said. The concert is certainly coming quick, but the students seem well prepared for it and ready to give an impressive performance.