Goshen College’s Community School of the Arts choirs to join Goshen High School choir for showcase concert

Concert: Community School of the Arts Showcase
Date and time: Sunday, Nov. 6 at 4 p.m.
Location: Goshen College Music Center’s Sauder Concert Hall
Cost: $7 for adults, $5 for seniors/students, available at the door one hour before the concert

GOSHEN, Ind. – Goshen College’s Community School of the Arts children’s choir, Shout for Joy, will join Goshen High School’s Advanced Crimson Choir for a fall showcase concert in Goshen College Music Center’s Sauder Concert Hall on Sunday, Nov. 6 at 4 p.m. Tickets cost $7 for adults and $5 for seniors/students, and are available at the door an hour before the concert.

Shout for Joy, for sixth through eighth grades and led by Sandy Hill, and the Advanced Crimson Choir, led by Marcia Yost, will collaborate for a performance of John Rutter’s “Mass of the Children” with piano and organ accompaniment. Yost, Goshen High School choral director and department chair, will conduct the choirs with Deloris Dueck accompanying. The performance will also feature soloists Hill, soprano, and Wisconsin native Andrew Szmanda, baritone, as well as student soloists Miranda Earnhardt, Ben Ganger, Morgan Shepherd and Anthony Campagna.

Rutter’s “Mass of the Children,” originally written for chorus, children’s choir and orchestra, received its world premiere in Carnegie Hall in 2003. The Mass is a Missa Brevis – a Latin Mass without a Credo – in five movements. Several additional English texts are also incorporated, including William Blake’s “The Lamb,” forming a progression from waking to sleeping that runs through the work as a counterpart to the liturgy of the conventional Mass text.

The concert will open with individual choral performances by Shout for Joy, and Rejoice Children’s Choir, for third through fifth grades directed by Rosemary Rupp.

The Community School of the Arts serves hundreds of community families each season, offering private lessons, two children’s choirs, five orchestras including the Elkhart County Youth Honors Symphony and Concert Orchestras, and Music Together® classes for 600 preschool children in Elkhart County. Need-based scholarships are available for every CSA activity.

Hill is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin with a master of music degree in vocal performance. She has taught vocal instruction in the Goshen community since moving here with her family in 2000, and before that at the Wausau (Wis.) Conservatory of Music. Hill also directed the Conservatory Choraliers in Green Bay (Wis.). She has directed Shout for Joy since 2008.

Rupp is recently retired after a career of 29 years in elementary school music education. She earned a master’s degree in education from Indiana University South Bend and a bachelor of arts from Goshen College. She is a former director of Shout for Joy, leading the choir from 1977 to 1982. Rupp began her association with the Community School of the Arts in 2006 as the director of the Rejoice Children’s Choir.

Yost is in her 27th year of directing choral music at Goshen High School and her 33rd year of teaching music in Elkhart County. In her tenure of teaching at Goshen, her choirs and the Crimsonaires have garnered championships in New York City, Toronto, Washington, D.C. and Montreal. The Crimsonaires were named National Champions of the Fiesta-Val Competitions throughout the United States in 1988, and have won numerous Indiana state titles, including champions in 1995, 1997, 1999 and 2010, and runner-up in 2000, 2004, 2007, 2008 and 2009.

Yost holds a bachelor of music degree from the University of Indianapolis where she was named the Outstanding Music Education graduate of 1976. In 1987, she received a master’s of music degree from Western Michigan University in music education and music history. She also serves as director of music at the First Presbyterian Church in Goshen.

Dueck graduated from Goshen College with a bachelor’s degree in music and received a master’s degree in music with an emphasis in piano pedagogy from Wichita State University. As a pianist she has performed with professional and university soloists, chamber groups and orchestras in Canada, Michigan, Kansas and Indiana. Dueck has taught piano for over 25 years and her students have received numerous awards at concerto and Music Teachers’ Association competitions. She has held church organist positions for 20 years. She is currently choral accompanist and music office manager at Goshen High School.

Editors: For more information about this release, to arrange an interview or request a photo, contact Goshen College Acting News Bureau Coordinator Alysha Bergey Landis at (574) 535-7762 or alyshabl@goshen.edu.

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Goshen College, established in 1894, is a residential Christian liberal arts college rooted in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition. The college’s Christ-centered core values – passionate learning, global citizenship, compassionate peacemaking and servant-leadership – prepare students as leaders for the church and world. Recognized for its unique Study-Service Term program, Goshen has earned citations of excellence in Barron’s Best Buys in Education, “Colleges of Distinction,” “Making a Difference College Guide” and U.S.News & World Report‘s “America’s Best Colleges” edition, which named Goshen a “least debt college.” Visit www.goshen.edu.