Archive: Arts & Entertainment

The Wells College Choral Ensembles will present their annual Spring Concert on Sunday afternoon, May 8 at 3:00 p.m. in Barler Recital Hall on the Wells campus in Aurora.  This event will be the final performance of the college singers under the direction of their founder and conductor Crawford R. Thoburn, who will relinquish his duties as professor of music and director of choral activities at the end of this academic year.  The three singing groups – Women’s Ensemble, Men’s Ensemble, and the mixed voice Concert Choir – will present a wide variety of choral works from the sixteenth century to the present.

During the past fifty-one years, the Wells choral ensembles have performed widely throughout the Northeastern U.S., and in Europe, winning prizes in international competition, singing by invitation for national professional music organizations such as MENC and ACDA, and appearing on public television and radio in this country and abroad.  These activities have established a reputation of choral excellence for the singers from Wells.

This year's Spring Concert will feature the Concert Choir of mixed voices singing sacred and secular works from composers such as Giovanni Palestrina, Thomas Tomkins, John Dowland, Henry Purcell, J.S.Bach, Giovanni Pergolesi, Franz Schubert, Charles Wood, James McCray and the Choir’s conductor, Crawford R. Thoburn. Also on the program will be arrangements of folksongs and Afro-American Spirituals, and the Women’s and Men’s Ensembles will each present works from their own repertoires.

Student vocal soloists will include sopranos Marie Angus and Sarah Clark, and the ensembles will be accompanied by Pianist Russell Posegate, lecturer in music at Wells.  Laura Campbell, also a lecturer in music at Wells will provide a flute obligato in one of the selections.

Crawford R. Thoburn, the founder and conductor of the Wells Choral Ensembles, is professor of music, and chair of the division of the arts at the College. In addition to his work as a conductor and teacher, more than one hundred of his choral compositions, arrangements, and editions have been published, and choirs across the U.S. and throughout the world sing his music.  Professional, church, and college groups record his works, which have been broadcast on National Public Radio and Public Radio International.

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