ISSUED: 15 April 2016
MEDIA CONTACT: Valerie Owens
SHEPHERDSTOWN, WV — Shepherd University’s Masterworks Chorale under the direction of Dr. Rachel Carlson will present Mozart’s Requiem on Saturday, April 23, at 8 p.m. in the Frank Center Theater. General admission is $15; $10 for faculty, staff, Shepherd alumni, senior citizens, and students 18 and under; and free for Shepherd students with a valid Rambler ID. The admission includes a pre-concert lecture at 7:15 p.m. with Dr. David Gonzol, associate professor of music. Admission and seating is first-come, first-served and there are no advance sales or reservations. The box office opens one hour prior to performance. For information call 304-876-5555 or www.shepherd.edu/music.
Composed in 1791, the Requiem was Mozart’s last composition and is one of his most popular and respected works. The Masterworks Chorale production will feature a full orchestra and Shepherd University voice faculty soloists, soprano Brooke Evers Moore, mezzo-soprano Melanie Regan, tenor Dr. Joseph Regan, and baritone Dr. Robert Robinson.
Carlson is the visiting director of choral activities at Shepherd University and conductor of the Shepherd University Chamber Singers, Women’s Camerata, and Masterworks Chorale. In addition to conducting, she teaches choral methods and conducting classes. She founded and serves as artistic director of Six Degree Singers, a community choir based in Silver Spring, Maryland, and serves as assistant conductor of the Washington Master Chorale. In 2014, Carlson was nominated for a Wammie (Washington Area Music Award) for best classical conductor/director. Carlson has toured extensively with professional choirs across the country, appearing as a soprano soloist with the Washington Master Chorale, Washington Bach Consort, Santa Fe Desert Chorale, Oregon Bach Festival, True Concord Voices and Orchestra, Vox Humana, and Washington Revels and as a professional choral singer with Conspirare and the Manhattan Chorale.
Gonzol, director of music education at Shepherd, has taught music in public schools and at colleges and universities in Pennsylvania and Idaho, as well as in Maryland and Minnesota. In 2009, he was awarded Shepherd’s first-ever Distinguished Graduate Faculty Award. Gonzol is a frequent clinician, giving presentations to chapters as well as state, regional, and national conferences of the Organization of American Kodaly Educators and the American Orff Schulwerk Association. He is a visiting educator at area schools and libraries, and his research is published in the “Philosophy of Music Education Review,” “Kodaly Envoy,” and “The Mountain Lake Reader.” He is the founder and director of the Shepherd Preparatory Chorus and the Shepherd University Kodaly-Orff Ensemble, and he has directed school and church choirs, as well as choral festivals in the region. In 2005, Schott published a collection of his Orff arrangements, “Round the Corner and Away We Go.”
The Masterworks Chorale is a 130-member vocal ensemble comprised of Shepherd University vocal students and members from the community. The chorale presents two full-length concerts per year of great masterpieces from the choral literature and performs an the annual holiday gala and family concert.
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