The Choral Union and Title IX are set to perform Thursday for their first concert of the year
A song in a fake language, gospel music and popular hits including Sia’s “Chandelier” and The Civil Wars’ “Barton Hollow” are only the beginning of a complex and engaging show.
Ohio University’s Choral Union, a group of 123 students and community members, and Women’s Ensemble, an all-female student group, are performing their first shows of the season at First United Methodist Church, 2 S. College St., at 8 p.m. on Thursday night.
Title IX, an a cappella group formed from Women’s Ensemble, is also performing a short set with a beatboxer.
“This concert will have ‘Chandelier’ by Sia, but it’ll also have a Bach piece and a French romantic piece by Gabriel Fauré,” said Paul Mayhew, assistant professor of music education and director of Choral Union and Women’s Ensemble.
Choral Union starts the night with a historical piece, “Sicut Locutus Est,” the 11th movement in Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Manificat.” The short movement is just a taste of the entire piece, which Choral Union is performing at its winter show in December, said John Obringer, a sophomore studying music education and a singer in Choral Union.
The piece originates from when Bach first started off as director of church choirs and wanted a piece to showcase his talent. To do this, he arranged different instruments together and created a piece that captivates attention from the very first note, said Mayhew.
Women’s Ensemble begins its set with a more modern piece called “Adiemus” by Karl Jenkins, composed in the late ’90s. Mayhew said the processional includes drums, two recorders and a “nonsense language.”
“The words aren’t real words,” said Haley Stockwell, a junior studying music education and a member of all three groups. “The composer wrote words to try to sound like a language.”
Women’s Ensemble is also performing a piece in French that includes an American Horn. Singing in French, rather than speaking it, is a difficult task because as the sounds are unfamiliar to the English language, Stockwell said.
Many of the other songs the groups are performing fit into the theme of southern folk hymns, gospel and southern harmony. Choral Union is playing three back-to-back hymnals while Women’s Ensemble is singing a gospel piece with “some clapping, some snapping as well as gospel piano accompaniment,” Stockwell said.
Both groups have grown in size and nearly doubled in the last two years since Mayhew became director.
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