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ImageWOOSTER, Ohio — The Wooster Chorus, featuring more than 50 student musicians from The College of Wooster, will present a concert at First Presbyterian Church (315 N. Cayuga St.) in Ithaca, on Saturday, March 17, at 7:30 p.m., as part of the ensemble’s 43rd annual spring tour. There is no admission charge, but a freewill offering will be taken.

Directed by John Russell, professor of music at The College of Wooster, the Wooster Chorus performs a rich selection of choral music as well as the finest sacred and secular music from the past five centuries. This year’s tour program includes several Renaissance motets by Heinrich Schütz and English composers Orlando Gibbons and William Byrd.


The featured work in this year's program is the REQUIEM, Op. 48, by 19th-century French composer, Gabriel Fauré. Written for La Madeleine, one of the largest churches in Paris, Fauré’s REQUIEM, Opus 48, is, nevertheless, conceived as rather intimate, thus revealing the composer’s intention to reflect the restrained thoughts of family and friends at a burial service. Because the original ensemble as envisioned by Fauré included lower strings (violins are omitted except for a solo passage in the Sanctus) and featured the organ, this performance by The Wooster Chorus with organ and solo violin is reflective of these modest intentions
of the composer.

Following the intermission, the choir will offer 19th, 20th, and 21st century choral works by Charles Villiers Stanford, Edvard Grieg, Samuel Barber, and Eric Whitacre. In addition, the program will include several African-American Spirituals.

Mark William Frazier, a 1981 College of Wooster graduate, will accompany the choir as its organist. Frazier has served as director of music ministry at churches in North Carolina, Iowa, Ohio, Virginia, and New Hampshire. While in Virginia, he was included as one of the five "government approved" private contract organists for weddings and funerals at the Fort Myer Army Base in Arlington. As a composer, he has won the American Guild of English Handbell Ringers Area II composition contest and the National Anthem Composition Contest. In 1999, his anthem "The Great Commission" was written for the dedication of the new Sanctuary of Brownson Memorial Presbyterian Church in Southern Pines, N.C. A former adjunct faculty member of the University of North Carolina at Pembroke where he taught music appreciation, Frazier is currently minister of music at South Congregational Church in Concord, N.H.

Russell, who has been a member of Wooster’s music faculty since 1974, teaches music theory and directs the Wooster Chorus at The College of Wooster. He received his undergraduate training at Oberlin Conservatory as an organ major. He also sang with the Oberlin College Choir and studied choral conducting before completing graduate studies at Boston University. Russell studied organ at the Mozarteum Academy in Salzburg, Austria. As harpsichordist and singer, he toured the Soviet Union with the Oberlin College Choir. In addition, he had advanced studies in organ and choral conducting at Clare and King’s Colleges, Cambridge University, England. He has had organ recitals and choral concerts broadcast over many National Public Radio stations, and he has conducted the Wooster Chorus in concert at such prestigious venues as Alice Tully Hall in New York City and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.


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