2026 Choir Spring Concert: A Life in Bloom

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:27]Heat. Heat. N.

[00:00:49]Heat. Heat.

[00:01:10]I'm Heat. Heat.

[00:02:26]Heat. Heat.

[00:02:46]Heat. Heat.

[00:03:09]All right.

[00:04:06]Yeah.

[00:04:12]Hey, hey, hey.

[00:04:45]Hey, hey, hey.

[00:07:02]Wow.

[00:07:17]Happy music.

[00:07:52]Heat. Heat.

[00:08:01]Black Wow.

[00:08:42]Wow.

[00:09:49]I threw away all my pain.

[00:09:53]Now we're free and I can see you alone.

[00:09:59]Waiting for the summer to come.

[00:10:05]Remember when we used to sleep in a bed full of dreams, but I know the winter's here and you feel so cold.

[00:10:21]Can we celebrate one last time all those years we left behind.

[00:10:28]Take me with you tonight.

[00:10:32]Take me with you tonight.

[00:10:36]Come on. Come on. The moon is shining like you never did before.

[00:10:44]I need you. I want you. And I won't lose anymore.

[00:10:52]Come on. Come on. The moon is shining like you never did before.

[00:11:00]I need you. I want you forever more.

[00:11:08]You know I want you to save.

[00:11:12]The last dance for you and me. Tonight we will shine just like the stars.

[00:11:24]I threw away all my pain.

[00:11:28]Now I'm free and I can see you alone.

[00:11:33]Waiting for the summer to come.

[00:11:39]Can we cate one last night? All those years we left behind.

[00:11:47]Take me with you tonight.

[00:11:51]Take me with you tonight.

[00:11:55]Come on. Come on. The moon is shining like you never did before.

[00:12:02]I need you. I want you. And I won't lose anymore.

[00:12:11]Come on. Come on. Moon is shining like she never did before.

[00:12:18]I need you. I want you forever more.

[00:12:26]I need you. I want you forever more.

[00:12:33]Baby, I need you. I want you forever more.

[00:12:57]Hey, hey, hey.

[00:13:12]Happy door.

[00:13:37]Are we happy?

[00:14:00]Heat. Hey, Heat.

[00:14:23]Heat. Heat.

[00:14:32]Heat. Heat.

[00:14:50]Everybody go.

[00:15:11]I ain't a Oo, good.

[00:16:05]Heat. Heat.

[00:16:54]Oo.

[00:17:15]Hey. Hey.

[00:17:45]Heat. Heat.

[00:20:04]Wow. Wow.

[00:21:26]growing things. And the silky wings in there must be music.

[00:21:53]music and sing me flings. Music is in all growing things.

[00:22:30]All the love that no trumpet go that no trumpet goes.

[00:22:46]Mercy is absolutely and music is brising.

[00:23:44]Music.

[00:23:46]Music is all living.

[00:24:31]day.

[00:24:41]soul come day in my soul. Come to day sun is rising in my soul to come day in my soul.

[00:25:34]It's a brand new day.

[00:25:36]>> Sun is rising.

[00:25:42]>> It's a brand new day. And the sun is rising in my soul.

[00:25:49]The sun is in my soul.

[00:26:12]Sun is rising in my soul. Sun is rising in my soul.

[00:26:21]>> It's a brand new day. Sun is rising.

[00:26:30]>> And the sun is rising in my soul.

[00:26:35]Oh, the sun is in my soul.

[00:26:45]>> Sun is rising in my soul.

[00:26:48]>> Sun is rising in my soul.

[00:26:51]>> Day is a break.

[00:26:56]>> Y day.

[00:26:58]>> Y day.

[00:26:59]>> Sing my soul.

[00:27:01]>> Sing my soul.

[00:27:03]day. It's a brand new day and my soul is in my soul.

[00:27:31]in my soul.

[00:27:51]Hello.

[00:27:53]Can you hear me? Is this on? Okay, good.

[00:27:57]Hi everyone. My name is Josh Wilson. I'm the director of the Mercer County Community College Choir, which is standing right behind me. The first two songs you heard from our program tonight, which is called A Life in Bloom, were uh Music of Life by Britney Boyin. It sounds like nighttime. It's beautiful. And then an awesome arrangement of the uh spiritual yonder come day arranged by the Pod Brothers.

[00:28:21]and we got our our band in on it. We had a soloist, you might have noticed, uh, Ziggy Wagner Wagner Wagner.

[00:28:32]She is not a late romantic German composer.

[00:28:36]>> All right.

[00:28:42]So, like I mentioned, our program tonight is called A Life in Bloom, and we are singing about nature and life and growth and all the wonderful things we have in our world. Um, and today was just a great day for this. Uh, I was putting this program together uh and it was a really cold winter and there was a lot of snow and I love snow and I love a cold winter. But now we get to sing about sun and warmth and all the things we had today. So, uh, the first, uh, the next song we're going to do, I should say, is a a hymn of praise. And many different cultures and religions have hymns of praise. It's a good thing. And we're going to do one by a great English composer named John Ruer. Um, we will be doing this program again on Saturday, and we will be combining with my church program, which is the Bordontown Baptist Church down in in Bordontown. And so, they're going to join us for a song, not tonight, but on Saturday. And then they're going to we're going to join together. And the way we're doing it is this is the song they brought and later in the program you'll have the song that we brought. So we're going to combine together. And this is a wonderful song.

[00:29:48]And it just it's called look at the world. And it's about looking at all the things that are just happening around us, right? Um you'll hear about all the seasons, the trees, the flowers, all kinds of nature imagery, right? And this is just it's a real song of hope, right? Uh, and we need that. It's always a good thing to sing about. We sing about it a lot. Um, but just when you look at the world around us, there's a lot of really bad things going on which are very easy to see, but there's also a lot of really good things, right? Um, I was amazed a couple weeks ago watching everything from the Aremis mission. I'm a big space nerd, so seeing humans go around the moon and realizing that how many people came together to make that happen is just pretty amazing. So, we're going to sing this and we're going to sing about all these wonderful things that are good in our world. This is Look at the World by John Ruer. Featuring our a few band members, we have Scott on the bass. We have Ann Marie on violin. As always, we have Alina on piano. And Joe's going to hang out, but he's not on this one.

[00:31:25]Look at the world.

[00:31:29]Everything all around us. Look at the world.

[00:31:39]Look at the world.

[00:31:43]So many joys and wonders, so many along our way.

[00:31:52]Praise to thee, oh wonder of creation.

[00:31:59]Give us thankful hearts that we may see.

[00:32:06]All the gifts we share and bless all things of thee.

[00:32:28]bringing forth fruit and look at the sunflow fear and praise to the Lord creation.

[00:33:00]Usful hearts that we may see.

[00:33:05]All the gifts we share and every bless. blessing.

[00:33:12]All things come of peace.

[00:33:23]Think of the spring.

[00:33:37]Everything grows.

[00:33:41]Everything to thee, oh Lord, for all creation.

[00:33:58]Give us thankful hearts that we may see.

[00:34:05]All the gifts we share and every blessing.

[00:34:12]All things come of every good and his love.

[00:34:37]We are his the earth to thee for all creation Thankful hearts that we may see.

[00:35:04]All the gifts we share and every blessing.

[00:35:11]All things come of peace.

[00:35:18]All Peace.

[00:35:47]It's a very beautiful song. Very simple, very straightforward.

[00:35:51]The next song is not that.

[00:35:54]This is frankly the hardest thing we are singing on the program and the thing I have tortured them with through about half of the semester. This is a piece by the Renaissance composer uh Palestrina.

[00:36:06]It's called Secoot Chervous and it is a motet from the 1500s. That's quite a few years ago. Um it was written in about the 1580s.

[00:36:16]And Renaissance music is very particular, right? And if if you study music history, it was the first time when music was written for the sake of being beautiful, which is something that's very interesting because that's one of the things we inherently think about music today. But before this in the in the medieval period and all through out a lot of history, it was very um functional, very utilitarian. It was meant to serve a purpose. And so a bunch of these Renaissance guys came along and and painters and and thinkers and sculptors and such. And they said, "Wait, we can just do things to be human and be beautiful." And so that is what this piece grows out of. Now, what makes it hard to sing is in the in the hymn you just heard, we are all together. The teners sing, the bases sing, the sopranos sing, the alto sing together, and then all of our words move together.

[00:37:03]What this piece is is it's in a thing called polifany where sopranos raise your hand. Altos, raise your hand.

[00:37:11]Teners, raise your hand. Bases, raise your hand. Yeah. They're all singing different things at the same time essentially, which is very difficult to coordinate. But as much as you can do here in Kelsey Theater, imagine you're in a giant cathedral and you're hearing this piece coming over you from the back of the space. That's what it was written for. Um, and what Palestrina does is he he takes this it's a simple line of text from a psalm and it says, "As the deer longs for running water, so longs my soul for thee, oh Lord." From Psalm 42.

[00:37:42]And so he does something called text painting where he sets these very long notes physically longing and then he has lots of moving eighth notes that sound like running water. Okay. So it's a very beautiful and very difficult piece but we're going to we're going to absolutely rock it. This is secret chis.

[00:38:40]All All See, is all the heart.

[00:40:18]might be Holy day.

[00:41:18]Yes, we have a couple transplanted teners that are going to be moving around. just ignore them.

[00:41:24]No, they're very helpful. We love them.

[00:41:27]So, not the hardest things out of the way. We can have fun. The the next piece is called Bloom, and it's a piece by Philip Sylvie, and it is the reason this concert came together. So, I was just listening through a playlist of coral music as a nerd like me does. And this piece came up, and I must have played it 10 times in a row. Um, and I was sad because it was only soprano and alto.

[00:41:47]And I was like, I kind of teners and bases sing. And then I found that he also wrote a soprano alto tener bass arrangement and we are going to sing that for you. And I paired this with seu cheroos because it kind of does the same thing. So the piece is called bloom and you'll hear the sopranos, altos, teners and bases. They all say the word bloom and then they kind of hold it out. And what Sylvie does here is he makes it sound like a flower that's unfolding.

[00:42:11]You hear one voice come in and then it this chord, this beautiful chord unfolds. So he's doing some of that text painting that Palestrina was doing. Um, and the cool thing about this is it just talks about the fleeting beauty that there is when it comes to uh flowers in bloom. Like there's only like a week of the year or two weeks where certain flowers bloom for. And so when the whole world comes into color um I think of the scene in the in the Wizard of Oz when it when Dorothy goes from being in black and white to being in in the land of Oz for the first time, right? It's like going from the end of winter into that spring is what this song absolutely sounds like. So this is Bloom by Philip Sylvvi.

[00:43:36]April rode silence humb.

[00:43:55]of the unk.

[00:44:01]beauty for a time.

[00:44:09]Uh in the season reborn beauty of the renaissance of new I feel Come to life at the surface of the braing.

[00:45:33]Breaking.

[00:45:52]Glor will flourish in it overwhelming beauty.

[00:46:22]For a time in the season reborn beauty of a renaissance of new life.

[00:47:15]All right. Thank you so much.

[00:47:17]Choir, you can go hang out backstage.

[00:47:21]We're going to have a few uh small group numbers to give us all a break except for those of us who are singing. and I gave the criteria of bring a song to me that kind of deals with the themes we're doing on the concert. Uh it is you two first. You're first. Um and so uh Micah and Rowan brought this to me and they hit me right in the fields because it's from one of my favorite musicals. This is Wedding Song from Hades Town. Okay.

[00:47:50]And it talks about how they uh playing the part of Orpheus is Micah and playing the part of Uritsy, you know, the myth.

[00:47:58]Um they want to get married, but they can't afford anything because they're poor. So they say that the earth is going to provide everything they need.

[00:48:04]This is wedding song, not wedding table.

[00:48:08]It's a different one from 80s town.

[00:48:39]Tell me who's the wedding All the rivers will sing along and they're going to break their banks for us and be generous. All the flash in the pan to fashion for your hands.

[00:49:22]Who's going to lay the wedding all the time when I sing my song along and they're going to bend their branches down to lay their fruit upon the ground. The apple and the sugar from the maple.

[00:49:50]The tree is going to lay the wedding table.

[00:50:23]Who's going to make the wedding song along to lay their feathers on the ground and we'll lie down and down a pillowath.

[00:50:51]The bird going to make the wedding and the lays.

[00:51:31]All right. Shout out to Micah and Rowan.

[00:51:34]Yes. And Micah is our like highest soprano and they were just singing the tenor part. So, your voice part isn't your voice. The next song we're going to do is a really cool piece that I didn't know and I was really excited when Cassie brought it to me. It is a song called Shout Sister Shout and it's from the 1920s and it was made famous by a three sisters named the Boswell Sisters. And so, you're going to hear some very awesome tight 1920s jazz harmonies. How does this tie in the program? I have no idea, but it's a really cool song. So, enjoy it.

[00:52:48]Lift your voice.

[00:52:58]your la single song how you feel off your Leave your spirit way up high.

[00:53:39]Look up to that sky.

[00:53:45]Stand up and shout.

[00:53:51]Hallelujah.

[00:53:58]Halleluah.

[00:54:13]That old should grab your hand.

[00:54:27]sister.

[00:54:30]Shall sister shout la shout. Oh sh Come on down. Just a little bit of joy la.

[00:54:54]Oh shout. Oh sh that old devil.

[00:55:26]right off your heel.

[00:55:34]Sister, >> oh Lord, >> oh Lord.

[00:56:06]So, that was Sky, that was Cassie, and that was Ziggy. And now we're going to switch Sky out for Micah for our last small group number. Um, this is another one that we're going to uh bring the band back out for. and Marie Joe on Joe Falsy on guitar and then Scott Hornick on bass. This is uh Wild Flowers which is one of my favorite songs between Bloom and Wild Flowers. It's how this concert came together. And this is originally a song by Tom Petty that was then taken and arranged by the the folk trio, the Whan Jennies, who if you do not know, go listen to them after this concert because they're awesome. Um there are uh three amazing female performers that they in the in the band version there's a guitarist, a violinist, and a bass player. And they sing and play at the same time. If you ever had have a chance to go see them, please go do that. So, uh these wonderful musicians are going to do the Whailing Jenny's arrangement of Wild Flowers.

[00:57:36]You belong.

[00:57:42]You belong on a boat out at sea sail away and I See no other compares with you.

[00:58:22]You belong among the wild flowers.

[00:58:27]You belong out at sea.

[00:58:33]You belong with your love on your belongwhere.

[00:58:41]You feel free.

[00:59:07]Run away.

[00:59:09]Go find a lover.

[00:59:12]Run away. Let your heart be your guide.

[00:59:18]You deserve the deepest of cover. You will lie in that home by and you belong among the wild flowers.

[00:59:34]You belongwhere close to me. me far away from your trone somewhere you Feel free.

[01:00:11]You belong.

[01:00:13]You feel Feel free.

[01:00:31]Feel free.

[01:00:50]Pretty amazing. Small groups, right? Oh my gosh. All right, choir is going to come back out and we're going to stay in the folk genre. Um, our next song is a piece called Crowded Table and in a similar fashion. It's by a folk country group called The High Women and it's arranged by the amazing coral composer Andrea Ramsay. And this is the piece that this is the other piece we will be performing with the Bordon Town uh choir. Um, it is uh one of our favorites uh second favorite behind the the final piece. Um, and it is a really important message and it ties into some of the other things we're talking about in that uh it's asking for a bigger table and that we want more people at that table and we want to have people that we might not always have at our table at that table.

[01:01:58]And so it is singing about it. And so as we sing this, think about how you can expand your own table. Who else would you have and have a meal with, right?

[01:02:08]Just sit down with, right? especially in our very extremely polarizing times. Who would you invite to sit and and break bread with them in that sense? So, we're going to sing about it. We're going to have the band still on stage. This is Crowded Table.

[01:02:46]Holding valley I can be a street light showing you the way home.

[01:03:34]>> I want a house with a table and a place by the heart.

[01:03:46]for us. Let us take on the world while we all and bring us back together.

[01:04:14]We'll have to plant a little roots.

[01:04:23]If it's love, then it's love.

[01:04:32]We want a We're going to have to sew the seed.

[01:04:40]Yeah. I want a house with a crowded table >> and a place by the fire for everyone.

[01:04:56]Let us let us take on the world.

[01:05:00]for we are unable and bring us back together when the day is done.

[01:05:12]The door is always open.

[01:05:16]Your pictures on my wall.

[01:05:20]Everyone's a little broken.

[01:05:24]And everyone belongs.

[01:05:32]I want a house with a table and a place by the fire for everyone.

[01:05:47]Let us >> let us take on the world while we are and bring us back together when the day is done.

[01:06:03]and bring us back together and bring us back together.

[01:06:26]When the day is done, when the day is done, And that featured Cassie Mova on a facing down microphone and Ann Marie shredding it over there on violin doing her best bluesy fiddle fiddle impression.

[01:07:24]The next piece on the program is another one of our favorites and doesn't fit into the texture of the program at first glance and that is Man in the Mirror by Michael Jackson. Um, now this song is from 1987. So we have covered from the 1590s through the 1990s now. Um, we've got all of it. And uh, we originally did this song this year. I came into this arrangement at the Trenton Children's Choir. Um, and we did it for our Soul Food and Song Black History Month concert. and I was like, I really like this song a lot. I don't know how we're going to fit into the concert. And then we kind of sang through it and we were like, yeah, we're going to do that. Um, but one of the things that's, you know, in all honesty, it kind of ties in, this might be a little bit of a stretch, but as someone who spends a lot of time outside and hiking and doing a lot of outdoorsy things, when we look at what is in the world, when we, pun intended, look at the world, there's a sense where we kind of look back upon ourselves and we see all these beautiful things out there and it makes us question, you know, what are we doing here? What's the point of all of it? Right? And so, Man in the Mirror is one of those songs, right? Um, it is about looking at yourself really honestly and saying,"Well, how do I want to grow as a person?" Which is one of the themes of the concert, right? How do I want to grow? Where are those places I might not be so happy about, but I want to improve in? Right? Um, so that's what this song asks us. Um, and if you've ever watched the music video for this, has anyone ever seen the music video for Man in the Mirror? It is not a happy video. This song is an absolute bop. And it is not a happy video, right? It shows a lot of the turmoil of the 1960s.

[01:08:57]um you know there's there's kids starving, there's all this all the um uh uh civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, all that stuff is wrapped up in there, right? Um and I can't help but think this song is even more important when you look at what is going on in the world today in the in the same kind of way, right? Um you know, I've seen parallels drawn and maybe you have too that the 1960s are very close to what we have going on in our culture today. So, um, we're going to sing the world to a better place, as cheesy as that is, with Man in the Mirror. And we're going to feature two amazing soloists. We're going to have Miss Sky Marshall and we're going to have Mr. Brain, I mean Brian Prattz.

[01:09:54]I'm going to make a change once in my life As I turn up my favorite winter, this wind is blowing my mind.

[01:10:23]I see the kids on the street.

[01:10:28]Who am I to be blind?

[01:10:36]A broken bottle.

[01:10:40]one soul.

[01:10:43]They follow each other on the wind. You know, they gothere to go. That's why I want you to know I'm in the mirror.

[01:10:59]I'm asking him to change his ways.

[01:11:04]And no message could have been any clearer. If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself.

[01:11:11]Then make a change.

[01:11:23]I've been a victim of a selfish kind of love. It's time that I realize there are some home pretending that they're not alone.

[01:11:42]A willow deeply broken heart in a tree.

[01:11:51]They follow the pattern of the wind.

[01:11:56]They got no place to be. That's why I'm starting with me. I'm starting with the man in the mirror.

[01:12:06]I'm asking you to change his ways.

[01:12:11]And no message could have been anyer. If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change. I'm starting with the man in the mirror.

[01:12:26]I'm asking him to change his way and no message could have been any given. If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself then change in his way.

[01:12:53]If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself, then make a change. You got to get it right.

[01:12:59]All you got time is when you close your heart, then you close your mind. That man, that man, that man. Oh yeah.

[01:13:10]That man.

[01:13:17]>> If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself. and make a change.

[01:13:26]Na feel good. Come on.

[01:13:50]with yourself. You know, you got to stop it yourself.

[01:13:58]>> Make that change.

[01:14:05]>> You got to let yourself >> change that change in the mirror.

[01:14:20]You'll love it.

[01:14:34]>> Make a change.

[01:14:48]Once again though, it's Sky Marshall and Brian Prattz with the most important part of the song. Pick that change.

[01:14:56]Just not the same without it.

[01:15:01]All right. So, in maybe the most unorthodox pairing of music that has been done in my career, we will now be going to a piece called Don by Martin Lson. And this piece is from a larger set he wrote called the Shansand dee roses where he took a bunch of poetry by re raer Maria Fonilka the German romantic poet and he wrote a bunch of poems about roses and Martin Lawrence and set them for choir. Um we will be singing the last one the most famous one of this set called deto. Now, it is uh a poem and I want to read that poem for you and you'll see maybe why it's a connected piece to man in the mirror and it is in French so we will be singing it in French but the English translation reads as follows. Abandon surrounding abandon.

[01:15:49]Tenderness touching tenderness. Your oneness endlessly caresses itself. So they say self-coressing through its own clear reflection. Thus you invent the theme of narcissist fulfilled. And here Rainor Maria vonilka is talking to the rose itself. And basically without a poetry degree or an English degree, it's saying that the rose is beautiful or a flower is beautiful because it just is itself. It is what it is. It does not try to be something that it isn't. And so it does what narcissists who is looking in the pool man in the mirror to see what's going on. Okay. Um it is what narcissist could never be. It is so sure of itself and it is so it knows what it is and how it fits into the world and that is why it is beautiful. And so this is this has come up. Um we did an exercise last week writing about what our favorite song is or what song summarized the concert and this was one of the ones that came up as Row and I just checked it's the one that came up as the most favored. So it was de Tom.

[01:16:51]There you go in case you were wondering.

[01:16:53]Um we will be singing this. The other thing that makes me very happy is the last chord of uh Man in the Mirror is the opening chord of this song. And that's just one of those things that makes me very happy as a as a music theory nerd. And on this one, we will have a uh a switch here.

[01:17:09]So, Yoretszi will be uh accompanying us, who is a student here at Mercer County Community College. She's an awesome pianist, and she will be switching with Alina, who will be singing with us.

[01:17:22]This is Dear Tom by Morton Lordson.

[01:18:09]Don't dress.

[01:18:28]Dear dear dear, dear dear deity sing.

[01:19:11]It's all it Dear dear dear.

[01:20:08]Hallelujah.

[01:20:29]always in the with every single It de it all.

[01:21:31]Ever All right, we've made it one more piece on the program.

[01:22:54]You guys ready? I am. All right. So, uh, before we get to our final piece, I have a couple thank yous to There they are. I got to write these things down, otherwise it's a bad time.

[01:23:07]All right. So, first off, thank you to all of our instrumental m musicians. We have Ann Marie on the violin.

[01:23:15]We had Joe Falsy on guitar and drums and all kinds of other things back there.

[01:23:19]There he is. And then we had Scott Hornick on the bass who is standing by doing the most bass player thing I've seen.

[01:23:28]Scott is also the coordinator for the department. Um, a big thank you to all the Kelsey staff, the ushers, the people outside, um, all the people that run this. And a massive shout out to Nick who is up running the sound for this.

[01:23:40]There was an event in Kelsey today and he just got in here right before it to get this all set up for us. Thank you, Nick.

[01:23:48]Thank you to Cararolina for making a program, a beautiful program. And for all of the people that are doing the live stream and the lights and all the other things, thank you so much for making this all work out. Um, yes, if you aren't doing anything, tomorrow night at the same time in the same place, 7:30 right here, there will be the jazz band concert. And that is always an absolutely great time. How many students up here are also in jazz band? Yeah. Okay. So, come hear them.

[01:24:23]They're We got singers, we got clarinet players, we got piano players. Do we got anything else? Am I missing anything?

[01:24:30]No. Okay, we got it all. But many of these students are absolutely incredible in that some of them aren't even singers as their quote unquote first thing. Not that you have to have a first thing, but many of them play like four or five different other instruments. So, um, one of them even plays accordion. So, if you need an accordion player, not going to say who that is.

[01:24:52]You can tell by the giggles. Um, and then we will be be performing this concert again on Saturday at Bordontown Baptist Church in downtown Bordontown at 4:00. If you liked it so much or you want to hear it in a beautiful, luxurious church space, you can come out and hear it a second time. Uh last thing also if you are interested in joining the choir or know somebody who wants to join the choir you can sign up for this because it's a class. So if you are interested we meet at 12:00 on Tuesday and Thursday. So you can take a long extended lunch break and come and sing with us.

[01:25:25]Um, our final piece on the program is uh the one that has unan unanimously been voted the song that sums up what this concert as is about or as we call it the poster child for the concert and this is Sing Out My Soul by Marcus Garrett. Um, it is a great piece. I had picked it out in the uh I picked it out in like September and we were a little thin last semester so it wouldn't have quite worked out but we're we have we have a couple more uh bodies here now. So, it's a wonderful piece and funnily enough, I'm currently getting my master's in coral conducting at Messiah University and I looked at the syllabus for this semester and would want you know, this piece was on the syllabus. So, that really worked out. Um, and uh we got a really cool moment where I recorded it for one of my videos and my professor made a video not to me critiquing me, but a a video that we could all kind of listen to and we learned a lot from on the song. So, that was a lot of fun. Um, this song has is is a setting of a really interesting poem. And the the poem is called uh, Sing Out My Soul, the same name as the song. And it was written by a poet named William Henry Davies. Now, I had to do some digging. I like poetry. I didn't know who this guy was. So, I looked him up and I kid you not, in his like poetry foundation bio, it says he was, and I quote, a professional hobo.

[01:26:42]I didn't know what that was. I think the more academic way to say it is that he was a vagabond. So he was born in Wales and he traveled uh by his own uh by his own accord. He never held a job for more than six months and he just kind of traveled and he would live in the back of train cars. He traveled across the US many times, went throughout Europe. He saw the whole world on the underside of the world if that makes sense. Um and because of that his poetry really resonated with a lot of people. um ironically specifically people in the upper class that didn't see that side of the world. Um and because of that he has some really interesting insights on life. And so Marcus Garrett sets this in such a wonderful way that he enhances or he he he stays true to that message. So the the first section of this is very exuberant. It's sing out. It's a very explosive exciting beginning. Um be ready. Um and and he lives in that. And then he gets to the middle message and Davies has an amazing quote that is one that I have thought about so much and we have kind of rattled around in our brains and that is train up your mind to be content no matter or what matters then how low your score and that's kind of the same message as dear deton in a way right if you if you train up yourself to be content with what you have then it doesn't matter what the world is around you and so Marcus Garrett sets it in this very dark very solemn way in the middle and then uh has these really exuberant outer sections.

[01:28:08]So, this is an absolute banger of a tune. It will get stuck in your ear.

[01:28:12]This is Sing Out My Soul by Marcus Garrett.

[01:28:32]>> Sing out. Sing it out. Sing out sing of my soul.

[01:29:08]Sing of my soul songs of joy.

[01:29:14]Sing of my soul songs of joy.

[01:29:21]Sing a bird will sing the rain of the earth.

[01:29:31]Be the rainbows of the arg.

[01:29:52]Not of death.

[01:29:59]I for up your mind to feel content.

[01:30:28]It matters then how long your sto makes rich or poor.

[01:31:00]Makes rich or poor.

[01:31:04]Makes rich or sing of joy.

[01:31:24]Sing your songs of joy will sing the bird will sing the rain of the The rains of the in sing of my soul sing of my sing of my soul.

[01:32:07]Sing of my soul.

[01:32:11]of my soul.

[01:32:15]Sing out Sing out sing.

[01:32:52]Hopefully that'll be stuck in your head all night. All right, thank you guys so much. Uh, come out tomorrow night to hear the jazz band or come to hear us again in a different venue on Saturday.

[01:33:03]Uh, yeah, thank you so much. Choir, go out that way.

[01:33:14]No way.