Earlham College | News from Public Affairs

Dan Graves came to Earlham in 1984 after 13 years of high school teaching in Connecticut. In addition to his duties as professor of music and conductor for Concert Choir, Madrigal Singers and A Cappella Choir, Graves served for 19 years as choral conductor for the Richmond Symphony Orchestra. He also served as a past president of the Indiana Choral Directors Association and is founding director of Earlham's Invitational High School Choral Festival.

Under Graves' direction, Earlham choirs have performed at two American Choral Directors' Association Central Division conventions and have toured the East Coast on alternate years.

In addition, he teaches Western music history courses, jazz history and choral conducting, and has led off-campus programs to Vienna, Austria, where his chamber choirs have sung at the Vienna Conservatory and the Musikverein.

RICHMOND, Ind. — Earlham College's combined
Fall Choral and Tour Preview Concert on
Saturday, Dec. 1, marks Concert Choir Conductor
Dan Graves' final Richmond concert and
previews the choir's upcoming East Coast Tour.

The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. in Carpenter
Hall's Goddard Auditorium and is free and open
to the public.

Although Graves will continue classroom teaching
in his position as professor of music at Earlham,
the Dec. 1 performance is his final concert in Richmond.

"It has been such a privilege and pleasure to work with the students at the College and singers in the Richmond community," Graves reflects. "I have been fortunate to have had the opportunities available here. There is simply no way I could repay those who have dedicated their time and talent to the choirs with which I have been associated. Support from so many in the Earlham and Richmond community as performers and listeners has meant a great deal to me."

Graves says that selecting the performance music is a favorite aspect of his job. It was no different for this final tour, which takes more than 55 singers for performances in early January to Pittsburgh; Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia; New York; and Cambridge, Mass.

The fall choral portion of the concert features the Women's Chorus, conducted by Noah DeLong, performing a set of seasonal Latin pieces. The first, Veni, Domine by Felix Mendelssohn, is a plea for God to descend quickly. A setting of Ave Maria, the traditional prayer to Mary, from contemporary composer and conductor David Childs, follows. Next, Robert Applebaum's arrangement of Five-Sided S'vivon provides a unique rhythmic approach to this traditional Jewish song. Finally, the Women's Chorus concludes with Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, based on Robert Frost's famous poem of the same name.

The tour preview begins with the Concert Choir's rendition of Jean Belmont's If Music Be the Food of Love (Sing On), Vytautas Miskinis' Cantate Domino or Sing to the Lord a New Song from Psalm 96:1-3, and Kinley Lange's Esto Les Digo from Matthew 18:19-20 — which instructs that "where two or three are gathered in My name, there will I be also." A featured number of the evening, Horizons, by South African composer Peter Louis Van Dijk, concludes this segment of the concert.

The Madrigal Singers follow with vocal chamber music from the 16th to 20th centuries. Renaissance works by John Farmer and Puearl lead through Monteverdi's flowing Ecco Mormorar l'Onde and Haydn's humorous Die Warnung to the more recent composition of Ralph Vaughan Williams' Three Elizabethan Madrigals and a selection from Menotti's The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore.

The Concert Choir returns to conclude the preview concert with a diverse selection of international repertoire from New Zealand, Brazil, Sweden and Cuba as well as the United States. The final number of the evening is Graves' arrangement of the traditional Quaker hymn How Can I Keep From Singing?

Contact:
Denise Purcell, public affairs assistant
765/983-1323 — E-Mail Denise