UVU choirs sing the way into Christmas season

UVU men’s and women’s choirs showed off their semester’s work at their Christmas concert, Sing Choirs of Angels, held at the Nu Skin Atrium.

The women’s choir sang almost exclusively reverent, expressive pieces, like“Beau Soir” by Claude Debussy. Many enjoyed two Scandinavian folk songs the women’s choir sang, “Mu Vaibmu Vadjul Doppe” and “Jubilanen.”

“I really liked the Debussy piece,” said Trevor Richard, a student from the University of Utah supporting a friend in the men’s choir. “I just like [that composer] and I thought the piece did a good job of capturing the kind of hauntingly picturesque quality of Christmastime — which I like.”

Richard also remarked that his friend seemed more stressed and nervous than he generally does going into a performance. Other members of the men’s choir said similar things.

“Getting ready for the concert was stressful because we had a concert not too long ago,” Connor Martin, a member of the men’s choir, remarked. “This [concert], because there is no chamber choir and we added a jazz band, it was more work for both choirs in a shorter time. Just learning the songs, memorizing them, and mastering them at that level … I think it ended up okay, but we definitely had to rush a bit for this one.”

Even with the anxiety Martin and Richard picked up on, the men’s choir displayed an impressive amount of energy with several upbeat songs. Their last piece was a Motown medley of songs from The Temptations. This performance included energetic solos, dance moves and an accompanying jazz band.

There were a couple songs performed that were particularly well-regarded by choir members Myra Rosengren and Hannah Blanton. Both members of the women’s choir, they commented on how much they enjoyed watching the upbeat Motown song the men’s choir performed. Rosengren and Marin both also said how much they liked one of the men’s choir’s slower songs, “Seven Last Words of the Unarmed”. Rosengren noted how interesting the chords were in these three songs and how the men’s choir singing “shimmered.”

The concert ended as may Christmas concerts do, the director asked the audience to join in with the last verse of a common song. For this song, both the choirs sang “The First Noel.” The men’s choir stood on the risers in front of the audience, and the women’s choir stood above the atrium on second and third level paths, looking and singing down to the audience.