色花堂app

Song will fill the L.E. and Thelma E. Stephens Performing Arts Center when 色花堂app presents its fourth Women鈥檚 Choir Festival Friday, March 9.

The daylong festival culminates in a 7 p.m. public performance by some 250 singers in the Joseph C. and Cheryl H. Jensen Grand Concert Hall. Admission is $5 for the general public, $3 for ISU faculty and staff, and free to ISU students with valid Bengal cards.

The department of music will host choirs from Century, Hillcrest, Blackfoot and Middleton high schools, featuring guest conductor Dr. David Cody of the University of Montana in his third appearance at the festival.

Cody will share the baton with festival director Kathleen A. Lane, founder and conductor of the 45-voice ISU Women鈥檚 Choir.

鈥淲e鈥檙e especially pleased this year to be part of the Women鈥檚 History Month calendar, and sponsored by the Anderson Gender Center here on campus,鈥� Lane said. 鈥淎s we specialize in music written for women鈥檚 voices, and feature women composers, the ISU Women鈥檚 Choir is now an approved class for the Women鈥檚 Studies Program.鈥�

Since its inception, the festival has also received support from the US Bank Rural Arts Series, Lane added.

鈥淲e鈥檙e not the only beneficiaries of US Bank鈥檚 generosity,鈥� Lane said. 鈥淔or years, this series has been helping visual and performing artists reach out to children in underserved rural communities. Farsighted business leaders realize that a dynamic community can鈥檛 afford to treat the arts as just a luxury for city kids.鈥�

Lane and Cody will rehearse and perform the participating choirs in works by Javier Busto, Gustav Holst, Heinrich Schuetz and Eleanor Daley.

鈥淓ach guest choir also will be featured in its own selection,鈥� Lane said.  鈥淚t鈥檚 a thrilling opportunity for high-school musicians who probably never have had a chance to sing in a fabulous hall like the Jensen Grand.鈥�

As host group, the ISU Women鈥檚 Choir will present a short program featuring a suite of Shaker hymns and a four-part setting of the 鈥淭wenty-third Psalm鈥� by Franz Schubert.

An assistant professor at the University of Montana, Cody teaches voice and opera history, as well as conducting the Women鈥檚 Chorus and co-directing the UM Opera Theater.

He is active throughout the Intermountain West as a tenor soloist, stage director, conductor, voice teacher and clinician.In addition to leading the ISU Women鈥檚 Chorus, Lane serves as the music department鈥檚 vocal coordinator and as general director of Opera ISU. She appears frequently throughout the region as a mezzo-soprano soloist and choral-vocal clinician.Festival accompanist Camille Blackburn has spent 15 years as choral director at Hillcrest High School. An established performer and director in southeast Idaho, she appears as principal keyboard player with the Idaho Falls Symphony. Active as an accompanist and adjudicator throughout the Northwest, Blackburn has served as adjunct professor of voice at BYU-Idaho and ISU, and maintains a busy private vocal studio.