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Five College Choral Festival to Feature 900 Voices Performing a Prayer for Peace

The biennial Five College Choral Festival comes around this year on February 24 in John M. Greene Hall at Smith College at 7:30 p.m. One of the most popular events on the winter roster, the festival showcases the choirs and choruses of Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith Colleges, and UMass Amherst, performing singly and then collectively for a rousing finale, this year featuring 900 voices singing an Israeli prayer for peace.

The concert program offers selections from many different styles and periods of music, among them spirituals, "country dances," music from the Scandinavian and Jewish traditions, a popular early English song by King Henry VIII, as well as a work by contemporary composer Ronald Perera, Professor emeritus of Music at Smith College.

One of the anticipated highlights of every Five College choral festival is the moment that brings together all the choruses on stage. This year's joint performance will present "Oseh Shalom," one of the most beloved of Israeli songs, written by Israeli composer Nurit Hirsh in 1969, with an arrangement by Dr. Elaine Broad Ginsberg, who directs the Hampshire College chorus and teaches music theory and composition at Keene State College in New Hampshire.

"It is a setting of a prayer from the Jewish liturgy," explains Ginsberg, whose arrangement was commissioned by the Five College music chairs for this year's concert. The prayer, she says, roughly translates into English as "May the One who established peace in the heavens, grant peace to Israel, and all the world, and let us say: amen."

Ginsberg says she originally wrote an arrangement of "Oseh Shalom," for four-part chorus in 1985 as a student at Oberlin College. "I actually wrote it in a single afternoon for my friends to sing that night at the Oberlin Kosher Co-op. Much to my delight, the arrangement soon had a life of its own, and has been performed by dozens of choirs across the United States, including those at Amherst College, Mount Holyoke College, UMass Amherst, and Mak'hela (the Jewish choir of Western Mass), and most recently on a European tour by the U.S. Youth Ensemble Chorale."

The arrangement for this concert, explains Ginsberg, had to take into account that the massed choir would have many more women singers than men: "thus, a new arrangement was born, this one for six-part chorus, four women's parts and two for men." Mallorie Chernin, who premiered the arrangement with her groups at Amherst College this fall, will conduct the combined choirs at this year's Five College Choral Festival.

The performance is free and open to the public but seating is limited due to the number of performers and early arrival is recommended.

Choral Festival Program

Hampshire College Chorus
Elaine Broad Ginsberg, conductor
performing a spiritual, "Ev'ry Time I Feel the Spirit"

Smith College Glee Club
Jonathan Hirsh, conductor
performing "as freedom is a breakfast food" by Ronald Perera, Professor emeritus at Smith

Smith College Chorus
Deanna Joseph, conductor
performing "Ave Maria" by Brahms

Amherst College Concert Choir
Mollorie Chernin, conductor
performing Ward Swingles' "Country Dances"

Amherst College Women's Chorus
and Amherst College Men's Glee Club
Mallorie Chernin, conductor
performing "My Spirit Sang All Day"

Amherst College Madrigal Singers
Katherine Willis '07, conductor
Dindirin . . . . . . . . Anonymous (c. 1500)
"I got up one fine morning, one morning in the field; I met the nightingale singing in the branches. "Nightingale, carry this message for me -- Tell my lover that I am now married."

Five College Early Music Collegium
Robert Eisenstein, conductor
performing two early English pieces: a 14th century "Gloria" by Pycard, and "Pastyme with Good Companye" by King Henry VIII.

Mount Holyoke College Glee Club and Chorale
Kimberly Dunn, director
Selections from Eric Whitacre's "Five Hebrew Love Songs" and "Swedish Folksongs" arranged by Hugo Alfven.

University of Massachusetts
Chamber Choir and Chorale
E. Wayne Abercrombie, director
diLasso's "Da pacem" and Stephen Chatman's "Dryad's Bells."

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