Students, with accompanist I-Fei Chen, in rehearsal on the King Concert Hall stage during the 2020 Choral Festival.
The return of an in-person concert in King Concert Hall showcasing three student ensembles at SUNY Fredonia will highlight the School of Music’s 11th Choral Festival on Saturday, Feb. 19, at 4 p.m.
The Chamber Choir, directed by Associate Professor Vernon Huff; College Choir, directed by Assistant Professor Adam Luebke; and Camerata, directed by Lecturer Brent Weber, will perform in the concert open to the public.
Community members can purchase tickets in advance for $8 at the Fredonia Ticket Office in the Williams Center. Tickets for Fredonia students are free if picked up in advance at the ticket office, or are $2 at the door.
The festival’s guest clinician will be Dr. Andrew Megill, who is regarded as one of the leading conductors of his generation, admired for his passionate artistry as well as an unusually wide-ranging repertoire that spans early music to newly composed works. He will conduct each Fredonia ensemble in a selection and also Aaron Copland’s “The Promise of Living” that features the combined choirs.
Dr. Megill is director of Choral Activities and Professor of Conducting at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and also leads three of North America’s finest vocal ensembles: the Montreal Symphony Orchestra Chorus, the Carmel Bach Festival Chorale and Fuma Sacra, an acclaimed chamber choir that specializes in Renaissance and Baroque music.
“This year, we wanted to really bring in a highly respected collegiate choral conductor, and there’s no one more respected in the profession than Andrew Megill,” said Dr. Huff, director of Choral Activities. “He’s from the University of Illinois, which was the first school in the country to grant a doctorate in choral conducting, so there’s a huge legacy there.”
“This year, we wanted to really bring in a highly respected collegiate choral conductor, and there’s no one more respected in the profession than Andrew Megill.” – Dr. Vernon Huff
Megill, a Johann Sebastian Bach specialist who has led Bach festivals at the University of Illinois, the University of Missouri-Kansas City and in Ireland at the Dublin Institute of Technology, will work with the College Choir on a Bach piece.
Megill has prepared choirs for the American Composers’ Orchestra, American Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Dresden Philharmonic, Montreal Symphony Orchestra and New York Philharmonic, among other orchestras. His academic credentials include a D.M.A. in Choral Conducting from Rutgers University, a M.M. in Choral Conducting from Westminster Choir College and a B.M. in Theory and Composition from the University of New Mexico.
Fredonia’s connection to Megill was forged through Dr. Luebke, a former student of Megill in the Westminster Choir College’s graduate choral conducting program.
The concert is sponsored in part by the Carnahan Jackson Fund for the Humanities, established through the Fredonia College Foundation, and the Fredonia chapter of the American Choral Directors Association. The festival was held virtually last year due to coronavirus pandemic restrictions.
