Concert Choir Performance To Pay Tribute to Broadway on March 7-8

COLUMBIA, Ky. -- Hits from some of Broadway's greatest shows will be performed March 7 and 8 as the Lindsey Wilson College Concert Choir presents "Give My Regards to Broadway: The Great Songs from Musicals Past and Present."

The concert will be presented at 7 p.m. CT on Monday, March 7, and Tuesday, March 8, in the Norma & Glen Hodge Center for Discipleship, 402 Helen Flatt Drive. The concert is free and open to the public.

The 42-member LWC Concert Choir will perform pieces from 10 Broadway shows that were either been nominated for numerous Tony awards or won several Tony awards.

Selections include pieces from the Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II classics The Sound of Music and South Pacific and as well as selections from current Broadway hits by Stephen Schwartz (Wicked), Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater (Spring Awakening), the late Jonathan Larson (Rent) and Billie Joe Armstrong (American Idiot).

The March 7-8 concert will also feature a medley of songs from three of Andrew Lloyd Webber's most enduring shows (Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Cats and Phantom of the Opera), and also selections from Hairspray and Little Shop of Horrors.

The concert is being directed by guest composer and conductor Matthew Hodge with LWC Associate Professor of Music and Religion and Director of Choral Programs Gerald Chafin.

"This will be one of the most musically diverse semesters for the Lindsey Wilson Concert Choir," Chafin said. "After they perform this tribute to Broadway, they will begin work on Mozart's Te Deum. So they will go from popular music of the 20th and 21st centuries to a sacred text from the 18th century."

Hodge and Chafin were responsible for choosing many of the selections to be performed at the March 7-8 concert, but the students also shaped the program.

"I asked them what their favorite songs were, and then we took a vote on which ones to perform," Hodge said. "It was important to me that the students performed pieces by some of Broadway's greatest composers -- such as Rogers and Hammerstein -- but this is their show, so I also wanted them to help select some of the pieces they will perform so that it would very much be their show."

The Lindsey Wilson Concert Choir will perform "Give My Regards to Broadway: The Great Songs from Musicals Past and Present" at 7 p.m. CT on March 7-8 in the Norma & Glen Hodge Center for Discipleship, 402 Helen Flatt Drive. The concert is free and open to the public. For more information: chafing@lindsey.edu or (270) 384-8084.