Dr. John Rommereim, director
The Grinnell Singers are a group of people who are highly diverse in terms of their backgrounds, interests, and talents, but who are united in their love of singing and their dedication to the choral art. Grinnell College is a private, coed, residential liberal arts and sciences college in Grinnell, Iowa with a student population of around 1750. Three members of Saint George's choir have strong connections to Grinnell Singers and the college.
The Grinnell Singers will be singing at Saint George’s as part of their Spring concert tour, with performances in Chicago, Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor, Pittsburgh, and Washington DC. Parking/Transit information can be found here.
The concert will feature Pulitzer Prize-winner Caroline Shaw’s To the Hands, a work that offers stunningly beautiful choral harmonies, while it considers a question that is central to our American heritage: what do we make of the vision of radical hospitality expressed in Emma Lazarus’s poetry at the Statue of Liberty, which enjoins us to offer relief to “those yearning to breathe free?” Shaw’s powerful work holds up those inspiring ideals while acknowledging the difficult realities of the refugee crisis.
The highly varied concert includes the “Choral Fantasy on Soon I Will be Done,” a brilliant new work by John Stoddart with a concerto-like accompaniment that mixes Beethoven-inspired passages with gospel and jazz-inflected material, played masterfully by pianist and faculty member, Dr. Hyejin Joo. The Singers will offer the majestic second movement from Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil “Bless the Lord, O My Soul,” and Claudio Monteverdi’s passionate love song, “In Converse with the Stars” [Svogava con le stelle].
The audience will be treated with the lovely folk hymn, “Bright Morning Stars are Rising,” a stirring, gospel-influenced setting of a Paul Lawrence Dunbar poem by Ken Burton titled “A Prayer,” Gyorgy Svridov’s soulful work, “Sacred Love” (the Grinnell Singers YouTube video of this song with current Grinnell Trustee Graciela Guzman ’11 has 48,000 views worldwide), and “Beauty by Beauty,” a gentle meditation on the fleeting human experience amidst the Earth’s enduring natural splendor by John Rommereim, with text by Joy Harjo, written in memory of beloved Grinnell College Professor of Education, Jean Ketter.