Orchestra at Maryville College and the MC Community Chorus join forces for ‘regal’ April 25 concert
April 11, 2023
The Maryville College Commencement service won’t be the only celebration taking place on Saturday, May 6: At a time to be determined, the coronation of King Charles III will take place roughly 4,100 miles away in London’s Westminster Abbey, and two MC music ensembles will celebrate that particular milestone with an April 25 performance.
According to Dr. Ace Edewards, conductor of the Orchestra and Maryville College; and Dr. Dwight Dockery ’05, conductor of the Maryville College-Community Chorus, the combined musicians of those two organizations will come together to celebrate music inspired by the coronation of the new English king. The concert will take place in the Clayton Center for the Arts on the MC campus.
“Historically, great music — choral, orchestral, and combined — has been part of English coronations, and this concert features some of the music that has been part of past coronations as well as utilizes music that is inspired by them,” Dockery said. “The theme came about when Ace mentioned to me that he might want to do a piece by English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams as part of this concert. As I started looking at selections to pair with it, and then I looked at the calendar, I realized that our concert was just a few days before Charles’s coronation.
“I asked Ace what he thought about that theme, and we both ran with it. This was a natural fit for me since English music is a primary research area of mine. It was such a great research project to discover what music had been utilized for past coronation services. Westminster Abbey is incredibly generous by making such information easily available online to the general public, including scans of programs when available. That was really fun for me to see!
“One of the surprising, serendipitous results, however, was learning that as a boy chorister, the father of one of the Community Chorus members actually sang in the 1937 coronation of King George VI (Elizabeth’s father and Charles’s grandfather),” he added.
A smorgasbord of works
Works on the program include a combined performance by both ensembles of Handel’s “Zadok the Priest,” written for King George II’s coronation in 1727 and featured in all coronations since; Vaughan Williams’ “Old 100th” by both choir and orchestra, a selection composed in 1953 for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II; and Holst’s “I Vow to Thee My Country,” another joint performance, this time of a work performed at the wedding of Charles and Diana in 1981.
In addition, the chorus will perform “Let Thy Hand Be Strengthened,” another Handel composition for George II’s coronation, with piano accompaniment by Dr. Jennifer Olander Anderson ’05; John Rutter’s “Open Thou Mine Eyes” and “O Clap Your Hands,” the latter also featuring Anderson on piano; another Vaughan Williams piece, “O Taste and See”; and “Thou Wilt Keep Him in Perfect Peace,” again featuring Anderson, a piece written in 1850 by S.S. Wesley but also performed at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
For its standalone pieces, the orchestra will perform Vaughan Williams’s composition “Greensleeves,” a take on the English folk classic the composer worked into his opera, “Sir John in Love,” in 1928; Handel’s “Music for the Royal Fireworks (overture),” commissioned by King George II in 1749; Edward Elgar’s “March: Pomp and Circumstance No. 4,” which served as the recessional music for the wedding of Charles and Diana; “The Banks of Green Willow,” composed by George Butterworth in 1913; and “Crown Imperial (March)” by William Walton for the 1937 coronation of King George VI.
“Choosing repertoire for the community ensemble is somewhat of an art unto itself,” Edewards said. “While there are a multitude of variables, it basically comes down to finding great music that is within the musical capabilities of the ensemble. The Orchestra at Maryville College has some fine musicians within its ranks, and it’s been an absolute joy preparing this repertoire with them.
“I think they’ve had a lot of fun as well. That being said, like most community ensembles, the OMC was hit pretty hard by the pandemic years. There are still some ‘empty seats’ to fill, and I would encourage anyone who’s played an orchestral instrument to come join us. Music-making with others is such a rewarding experience.”
A community treasure
Similarly, the chorus has yet to regain the number of singers it had prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Dockery added, but by combining forces, both chorus and orchestra present a more robust sound, particularly around such rich programming and strategic presentation of it.
“We work on vocal technique that allows both text and vocal tone to be perceived by the audience better, and we’ll be doing some non-orchestral works — and the orchestra will be doing some non-choral works — in order to give the singers’ voices a break,” he said.
“Whether it be a choir or a band or an orchestra, the coming together of a diverse group of people to engage their minds and skill in the creative process towards a singular artistic goal is one of the more rewarding sinews that bind a community together,” Edewards added. “Maryville College has taken on a great calling in providing these opportunities for their students and the greater Maryville community. The students benefit. Normal folks who work normal jobs benefit. And the community benefits as they enjoy these wonderful concerts watching their friends, neighbors and coworkers performing.”
More broadly, Dockery pointed out, community ensembles are vitally important in building and sustaining the culture of a region — not necessarily artistically, but in terms of the ties that bind a community together. Political, social and philosophical differences are set aside, he added, by those who come together for “the common goal of working toward something beautiful — in this case, making music together.”
“We are all people from this community from various backgrounds who are creating something greater than any of us could create on our own,” Dockery said. “And what’s more, the end result is something that the community at large gets to enjoy. That’s special, and it’s difficult to come up with many more instances of such an experience in our lives today.
“Community organizations have been dwindling in our society over decades, even more so due to COVID. I love that Maryville College still understands the intrinsic value of that and makes it available to its students, whom I know to learn from the experience of being in a group with community members as I did as a student; and to the broader community at large, which reaps the rewards.”
The Orchestra at Maryville College and the Maryville College Community Chorus will perform at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 25, in the Ronald and Lynda Nutt Theatre of the Clayton Center for the Arts. Tickets are $5 and free for MC students, faculty and staff and can be purchased online. Call the box office at 865-981-8590 for more information.