NW Missouri Times

Northwest Missouri State University will host a fall concert featuring its Concert Band and Concert Choir on November 11. The event is scheduled for 7 p.m. at the Charles Johnson Theater in the Olive DeLuce Fine Arts Building. Admission is free and open to the public.

Dr. Debbie Brown, associate professor of music, leads the Concert Choir, while Dr. Max Gerhart, lecturer of music, directs the Concert Band. Both faculty members started their conducting roles this fall.

“I haven’t been a choir director for the last 10 years, so it’s really fun to be able to get back and work with these students,” Brown said. “They are just doing a super job, and they are working hard to get ready for our performance.”

The concert also serves as a platform for music education majors to gain teaching experience by conducting one of the pieces during the performance.

“They get this opportunity – a really valuable opportunity – to start from the very beginning and then conduct the band every week leading up to the concert,” Gerhart said. “That’s kind of the big, special thing about this concert.”

Connor Betts, a senior vocal music education major from Moberly, Missouri, is among those serving as student conductors for the Concert Choir.

“There are weeks where I go in and I don’t feel 100% confident about what the outcome is going to be, and then some weeks it goes really well,” Betts said. “It’s crazy how much I’ve grown in this process.”

The Concert Band will perform selections such as Adrian Sims’ “Starlight Adventures,” Frank Ticheli’s “Loch Lomond,” “Portrait of a Clown,” “Simple Gifts: Four Shaker Songs,” and Quicy Hilliard’s “Dance of Fire.” The Concert Choir’s program includes a Torres Strait Island folk song arranged by Northwest alumnus Greg Gilpin; Ruth Morris Gray’s “A Dream Within a Dream;” Maggie Furtak’s “I Don’t Sing;” John Trotta’s “Cantate Domino;” and Victor C. Johnson’s arrangement of the spiritual “Hold On.”

“This performance is so exciting because you get to see a blend of both concert band and choir,” Gerhart said. “Because you get both the choral side and the band side represented, we also get to see a huge swath of our student body present in the building making music together.”

The Concert Band was established in 2021 and includes brass instruments, woodwinds, percussion, and string bass. It performs works from various periods and styles and is open to all university students as well as community members without auditions.

The Concert Choir is an intergenerational group conducted by both faculty and students that provides pre-service music teachers with practical teaching opportunities before their student teaching placements. Like the band, it welcomes all Northwest students and community members without requiring auditions.

For more information about musical ensembles or upcoming performances at Northwest Missouri State University, interested individuals can visit their website.