On today's edition of The Front Row, we talk to Dr. John Hollins about the upcoming Lubbock Chorale season. Dr. Hollins is the associate director of chorale activities here at Texas Tech University.
"The Lubbock Chorale is a wonderful nonprofit arts organization, it is a community arts organization. We are in our 44th season this coming year, approaching our 45th anniversary. It's a special group, it has a unique relationship with Texas Tech University School of Music. In 1976, first called the Lubbock Civic Chorale, now just the Lubbock Chorale. It morphed in the early years, but for a good 44 years it has been what it is today, which is a group of people who love to come together and sing. Who appreciate and enjoy the chorale arts, the beauty of singing together and making music by joining our voices together. Our primary vision and mission is to perform chorale masterworks from all periods of music, from medieval to the present day."
"We are also a registered class, an elective chorale class of Texas Tech University. We have a handful of registered students, a dozen or so, and scholarship singers, now these are students who are awarded a scholarship to sing and serve as leaders in the chorale so that's a second category of students. And then community members which would make up, I would say, about 75-80% of the chorale now. What that means though, is that everyone who is there wants to be there. So we do have a wonderful contingent of registered students, scholarship singers, and then community members, some of whom have been in the chorale for over 30 years, and some for almost the entire duration. Many many have joined us in the past five years, so what we represent is diversity, I think."
"This season's fantastic, they always are to me, I must say. The chorale has worked so very hard to get to where we are in our 44th season. We're opening in October. First of all, this season, we've more or less titled Monumental Women and Men, and it came from the concerts. The theme came from the concerts, not the reciprocal. Our first concert is all female composers, celebrating women composers past and present. We're looking forward to performing a specially commissioned piece by Dr. Elyse Kahler, a graduate student of composition theory here at Texas Tech, who is now teaching in Texas and out in the world being famous. So we have a commissioned piece, hot off the press, brand new. Then we'll be celebrating composers from the present day, with everyone in between."
"Then in December, we have a tradition now of presenting some form of messiah and this year we'll do the Christmas portion in the sing along format, invite our audience to sing along on all of the Christmas choruses. So December is Vivaldi and Handel. March is our annual gayla, My Fair Lady is the theme, the featured piece."
"We have packages available or individual concerts available. We don't have a season pass ticket, because we ticket through various outlets for various concerts. But this year, all of our tickets are also select a seat outlets, so you can always visit that for our ticketed events."
More information is available at LubbockChorale.org, or call 806.401.1525.
