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NIC Choirs to Perform at Carnegie Hall

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NIC Choirs to Perform at Carnegie Hall

North Idaho College is going to New York City!

On Friday, May 22, 2015, singers from the NIC choirs will join other singers from all over the United States to perform at Carnegie Hall.

The performance of Dr. Tim Sharp’s, “A High Lonesome Mass” will be directed by Dr. Sharp himself, in its debut premiere at Manhattan’s infamous concert venue.

“It’s one of those things that you only dream of doing, is performing in Carnegie Hall, and here it is,” Katelynn Eppenstein, a music education major at NIC and member of the NIC choirs, said.

“This is the first time that we’ve been invited to be a part of this,” NIC choir director Max Mendez said. The choir performed the piece in September after working with Sharp directly for a few days before the concert.

The concert was free, but donations of canned food were requested for the NIC food pantry.

Every concert the NIC choirs and bands have performed this year have been dedicated to donations for different groups in the Coeur d’Alene area, including a concert last week by the band in honor of veterans.

Now the community has the opportunity to give back to the choir, as the trip will not be subsidized by the college and students will have to pay their own way to NYC.

On April 21, 2015, the choir will host a concert called “Lift Every Voice and Sing Choral Celebration” to benefit North Idaho College music scholarships. The concert will be free, but donations are requested.

“It’s really nice, as a group, to come together and be able to perform something new or whatever is thrown at us. It’s just a really nice experience and I think it’d be great if people just showed up and took the time to kind of just experience something different,” Eppenstein said. “We’re very unsure of how it’s going to go, but it’s going to be so much fun.”

The Choir is considering other fundraising, but no official plans have been made. Mendez said students might expect an open mic night at a coffee house where the proceeds would go to people involved in the choir in the future.

Sharp worked with the NIC choirs for only a brief period of time, but according to those who worked with him, they were able to learn a lot in that amount of time.

“We rehearsed with him with the choirs; he gave us insight into the piece and the process of writing it, he did some presentations on American music for the region around Tennessee that predates country music,” Mendez said. “A lot of it was just on the background on the piece, the stylistic singing of it, the phrasing, all these musical things that he alluded to. That was enough. That was a lot.”

Sharp worked with choir members for only 3-4 days prior to the concert, and then played banjo in the performance as part of a small folk band that accompanied the choir.

Sharp and Mendez are both on the board of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA). It was at an ACDA meeting that they met and arranged for Sharp to visit NIC.

“In our talking, he shared his movements of this piece. He had a reading session he went to so we went and sang it – sang the movements – and I went to him and said, ‘this would be a great piece for my singers at the college. Is there any chance you would be willing to come out?’ And he said ‘Sure, I’d love to do that. By the way, next year we’re having the Carnegie Hall debut. Would you be interested in bringing some singers?’ I said ‘absolutely.'”

“A High Lonesome Mass” is a choral, folksy, bluegrass tale of circa-1930s American gospel. Written and composed by Sharp, he will be conducting the concert at Carnegie Hall to hundreds of singers from across the U.S. A band from Nashville will come to play accompaniment with the singers.

“If you’ve done the mass before, the traditional mass, and then you transition to this bluegrass mass, it’s like, ‘this is totally strange,'” said Eppenstein. “It was definitely different to sing it one way vs. this new way.”

When asked what kind of preparation the choir would have to do to prepare, Mendez was confident.

“Much of the preparation is already done,” said Mendez. “We worked the first 6 weeks of the semester really heavily on it. In March, April, May; we’ll revisit the Mass.”

Eppenstein also mentioned that Sharp requested the singers come dressed in “bluegrass chic.” They’re still trying to figure out exactly what that means.

“I think it’d just be really cool for people to just come out and listen to what our group has worked so hard for,” said Eppenstein.

The choirs will perform at Carnegie Hall on May 22.

Taylor Nadauld is the Lead Reporter for the Sentinel. This is her third semester at NIC where she is pursuing an A.S. degree in Journalism.

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