New voices at North Central’s choral festival

Vocal talents of area junior high and high school students, as well as North Central College’s choral ensembles, will be showcased Oct. 13 during the annual Choral Invitational Festival at the Naperville school.

Student groups performing at this year’s festival are Naperville’s Lincoln Junior High School Eighth Grade Chorus, under the direction of Ross Berkley, and the Rockford Christian Concert Choir. This is the first time a junior high ensemble has been invited to participate.

The Choral Invitational Festival begins at 7:30 p.m. in North Central’s Wentz Concert Hall, 171 E. Chicago Ave. Tickets are $5 for adults, $3 for students and senior citizens, and are available by calling the North Central Box Office at (630) 637-SHOW or visiting northcentralcollege.edu/showtix.

Each year, members of North Central’s music faculty invite two or three ensembles from area schools to spend part of a day rehearsing and learning vocal techniques from college singers and acclaimed voice instructors. The day traditionally concludes with a public performance.

North Central’s Women’s Chorale and Chamber Singers, under the direction of Ramona Wis, and Concert Choir, under the direction of Jeordano “Pete” Martinez, will each perform.

Then the visiting vocal ensembles will perform and combine their talents with the North Central ensembles to perform the finale from “The Gondoliers.”

“Rather than a large event with a dozen choirs, we feel having two or three invited groups allows a better experience for the visiting students,” Wis says.

Wis, Martinez and Jacqueline Schutt, adjunct instructor of music at the college, will conduct the clinic sessions with the guest ensembles, “giving feedback and trying some new ideas — essentially working collaboratively in whatever way best helps the goals of the visiting singers,” Wis says.