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Eclectic Community Choir back for spring concert

We’re back!
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Members of the Eclectica Community Choir perform Singing in the Rain during the spring concert last year on May 13 at Martin Exeter Hall. File photo.

We’re back!

We are calling this spring’s concert Mountain, Sea and Sky, the title of one of our selections. We will be performing at 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 11 in Martin Exeter Hall. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m.

The accomplished, local bluegrass band, Front Porch, will open with music between 6:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.

Proceeds from the evening will go to the 100 Mile House Hospital Auxiliary and the Mill Site Lodge/Fischer Place Auxiliary to purchase specialized equipment not funded by other sources.

We especially want to thank Sunrise Ford for its donation this year covering the rental of Martin Exeter Hall.

As you know Eclectica Choir is a true community choral group. We currently enjoy the participation of approximately 50 members, ranging in age from 13 to 81, with a full complement of soprano, alto, tenor and bass voices.

We depend on, and welcome, community participation. Our membership is open to anyone wishing to sing with us.

Barbara Hooper continues as our lead director and Melissa Hermiston is our assistant director. We are blessed that Donna Forward continues as our very gifted accompanist on piano.

In keeping with our choir name, our program on May 11 will entail an entertaining, varied selection of choral pieces, accompanied also by several ensemble pieces performed by our choir members. In our ongoing devotion to diversity, our audience will again find that we have a mix of music in language and culture.

Our selection includes the lovely, nuanced Three Japanese Poems (music by Ruth Morris Gray), a moving testament to the beauty and power residing in weather and seasons across the year.

Field Behind the Plow (Stan Rogers), a quietly stirring evocation of life lived precariously on the edge in farming and ranching, will be accompanied by several stringed instruments, including guitar, mandolin, stand-up bass, fiddle and banjo.

We will also be singing Twenty Three Camels (Coughlin and Nickel), a raucous musical-recall of life on the gold rush trail amid an episode of a less than successful effort to include camels in the labour force.

Immigrant Son (Estanislau Gubiotti) captures the essence of the age-old story of human migration in its embodiment of hope for a new life, and the losses that may accompany it.

We are also gladdened to sing Every Time I Feel the Spirit (William Dawson), a rousing African American song.

This is but a taste of what the evening will hold as we look forward to sharing our passion for singing, and the pleasure it evokes, with our community here in 100 Mile House.

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