Maryville College Concert Choir kicks off spring ‘Songs of Hope’ tour March 5 at Clayton Center

Feb. 21, 2024

Maryville College Concert Choir spring 2024 tour poster

They return to Maryville College a little better than when they left … and thanks to the “Songs of Hope” theme they’ll carry with them to performance stops in Tennessee and the Carolinas, the singers of the MC Concert Choir will leave the destinations on the Spring Choir Tour a little better than they found them.

The public is invited to attend the March 5 Choir Tour Send-Off Concert as a way of sending the students off, and to join them for a joyous return at the March 26 Spring Concert. A long-standing Maryville College tradition, the tour plays an important role in the musical development of choir members, and in spreading the word that the College’s Division of Fine Arts is unparalleled when it comes to opportunities for aspiring students, said Stacey Wilner, director of choral activities at MC.

“The choir that returns at the end of the tour is not the same one that left campus five days prior,” Wilner said. “The touring experience provides opportunities to improve musicianship skills because the students have to adapt to a variety of acoustical settings, develop vocal endurance and find an inner strength to keep performing despite the many challenges of being on the road.

“The friendships among the students deepen within the ensemble and expand to include many new friends that are made through host stays and connections at various churches, high schools and assisted living facilities. Traveling and performing together creates strong bonds that often last a lifetime. Performance tours also provide exposure for the ensemble, leading to new connections and increasing the profile of the College’s Music Department. A concert tour generates excitement within the community and also assists with recruitment.

“Choir tours can also help boost an ensemble’s exposure and can help build a stronger reputation within the music community,” she added.

This tour, Wilner said, marks the first truly domestic tour by the MC Concert Choir in five years. An international tour of Scotland was cancelled in 2020; an outdoor concert in downtown Knoxville took place in 2021; and in 2022, a short mini-tour of the Chattanooga area took place as COVID restrictions began to ease. The 2023 spring tour was another abbreviated one, as the ensemble prepared for the makeup trip to Scotland, which took place last May.

“The students are beyond excited at the prospect of bringing back this time-honored tradition,” Wilner said.

This year’s tour explores “Songs of Hope,” Wilner added, with selections designed to explore the full spectrum of the human experience, from dark to light. The theme and corresponding selections were inspired by “I’ll Make the Difference, A Song of Hope for Singers Around the World,” by the late Moses Hogan, which was commissioned by the American Cancer Society Relay for Life in 2002, Wilner said. Some of the other songs on this year’s tour program include:

  • “In Meeting We Are Blessed,” written for the meeting of the Nairobi Chamber Chorus and the Festival Singers of Florida with lyrics by R. Gatsnahos, whose text was inspired by English poet and Anglican cleric John Donne and shares a “universally relatable message of the importance of friendship and solidarity,” Wilner said.
  • “Pilgrims’ Hymn,” by Stephen Paulus, well-known for his choral miniatures. The piece, Wilner pointed out, “is a serene and impassioned statement of faith” and has been “performed at the funerals of two United States presidents — Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford.”
  • “Prayer of the Children,” by Kurt Bestor — a Serbian missionary who wrote it to express the confusion and sadness felt by Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian children in the 1970s and particular resonant due to similarities with those children caught up in unrest in Ukraine, Russia, Israel and Palestine. The song will be dedicated to those young people, Wilner added.
  • “Hope for Resolution,” by Paul Caldwell and Sean Ivory, will pair a European chant melody (“Of the Father’s Love Begotten”) with an anti-apartheid song from South Africa. “It is a celebration of diversity while illustrating that it is indeed possible for people to share divergent musical and political ideas and still work together for a peaceful coexistence,” Wilner added.

Laying the groundwork for the tour, Wilner said, is a challenge — for her, for choral assistant Hannah White Strong ’18, and for the students themselves, many of whom must work around midterms and Spring Break to participate. In addition, coordinating with churches along the tour route to arrange for logistics, reserving lodging, and ensuring the material is given the proper amount of rehearsal time for a professional performance makes the Choir Tour a labor of love indeed.

But watching it transform her charges into better singers, and witnessing the celebration of community at the Spring Concert upon their return, makes it all worth it, Wilner said.

“Throughout the tour, there are opportunities for me and the other members of our choral staff to get to know the students better, and vice versa,” she said. “It brings such joy to my heart to watch the singers grow in confidence and discover inner strengths they didn’t know they possessed. They make new friends along the way, including MC alumni, which enables them to feel more deeply connected to the traditions of the College.

“The responsibility is humbling, but an honor and blessing for me personally. The touring process enables them to mature both musically and personally, and create memories that they will cherish throughout their lifetime.”

The 2024 Spring Choir Tour stops are free and open to the public. The itinerary includes:

  • 4 p.m. Feb. 25 at First United Methodist Church of Oak Ridge, 1350 Oak Ridge Turnpike, Oak Ridge, Tennessee;
  • 12:30 p.m. March 5 Send-Off Concert in the Harold and Jean Lambert Recital Hall of the Clayton Center for the Arts on the MC campus;
  • 6 p.m. March 6 at Shandon Presbyterian Church, 607 Woodrow St., Columbia, South Carolina;
  • 6 p.m. March 7 at The Village at Summerville, 201 W. 9th St. N., Summerville, South Carolina;
  • 6 p.m. March 8 at Second Presbyterian Church, 342 Meeting St., Charleston, South Carolina;
  • 11 a.m. March 10 (worship service), Covenant Presbyterian Church, 1000 E. Morehead St., Charlotte, North Carolina; and
  • 6:30 p.m. March 10, Covenant Presbyterian Church, 603 Sunset Drive, Johnson City, Tennessee.

The Maryville College Concert Choir’s homecoming performance and Spring Concert will take place at 7 p.m. March 26 in the Ronald and Lynda Nutt Theatre of the Clayton Center for the Arts. Tickets are $10 for the public and free for MC faculty, staff and students, although a printed ticket is required for admission. To purchase tickets or find out more information, call the Clayton Center box office at 865-981-8590.

Maryville College is a nationally-ranked institution of higher learning and one of America’s oldest colleges. For more than 200 years we’ve educated students to be giving citizens and gifted leaders, to study everything, so that they are prepared for anything — to address any problem, engage with any audience and launch successful careers right away. Located in Maryville, Tennessee, between the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the city of Knoxville, Maryville College offers nearly 1,200  students from around the world both the beauty of a rural setting and the advantages of an urban center, as well as more than 60 majors, seven pre-professional programs and career preparation from their first day on campus to their last. Today, our 10,000 alumni are living life strong of mind and brave of heart and are prepared, in the words of our Presbyterian founder, to “do good on the largest possible scale.”