Students in UCLA Combined Choirs and Chamber Orchestra set aside books to perform in Royce Hall
Courtesy of REBECCA LORD
The UCLA Chamber Orchestra and Combined Choirs, including Professor Donald Neuen, will perform at Royce Hall on Saturday.
UCLA Combined Choirs
Saturday, 8 p.m.
Royce Hall, $15
By Margaret Davis
June 7, 2012 12:36 a.m.
UCLA students are all familiar with the tall towers, continuous arches and ornamented interior of Royce Hall, but very few get to know the feeling of performing in it.
On Saturday, the UCLA Combined Choirs and Chamber Orchestra will have that opportunity.
The UCLA Combined Choirs is made up of the University Chorus and the University Chorale. Also in the Combined Choirs is the Chamber Singers, a smaller choir that comes out of the chorale, said Sarah Hersman, a second-year neuroscience graduate student and soloist in the chorale. The two choirs will come together with the chamber orchestra to put on a concert that will feature both faculty and student soloists, said Professor Donald Neuen, director of the chorale.
Saturday’s performance will include three different pieces: Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Cantata VI,” Paul Chihara’s “Magnificat” and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Requiem.”
“(The Bach “˜Cantata VI’) is extremely difficult and very fast, but it is supposed to sound simple,” Hersman said.
The second performance piece is composed by Chihara, a theory and composition professor. According to Neuen, Chihara also composes for the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony and Chicago Symphony orchestras, as well as for film soundtracks.
The “Requiem” will finish the performance with chorus, soloists and orchestra, according to Neuen. He said that it was not only the last piece Mozart wrote, but also the height of his writing. Neuen said he believes these are pieces that can appeal to many different people. In fact, he also said that a large majority of the choirs is not comprised of music students, but consists of many students studying the sciences.
According to Hersman, as both a scientist and a musician, she needs both science and music to feel completely fulfilled.
“It stretches different muscles and different aspects of (individuals),” she said. Hersman also said that she believes many other people would benefit from having both science and music in their lives from early on.
“I think a fully rounded person wants emotion and intellect to balance, and so a really good release for scientists is music,” Hersman said.
According to Neuen, the large portion of non-music majors in the performance would surprise many people.
“We try and do everything as if we were a professional group in New York City. … That’s what we try to sound like, act like, perform like,” he said.
A large part of the group’s professionalism seems to be a result of their instruction.
Neuen introduced Rebecca Lord, a professional soprano singer, violinist, actress and dancer as someone who was instrumental in continuing the success of the program.
She said that she lived as a professional in New York, waking up at 5:30 a.m. for auditions and earning grocery money by performing in Central Park with her sister.
Lord later moved to the West Coast and completed both a master’s degree in music and a doctorate in musical arts at UCLA in two years. Lord said that this is when she started conducting the University Chorus.
Neuen said that he could not imagine any better way to spend his time than conducting the University Chorus. He said that he believes the arts to be an essential part of life.
“The only reason we have the arts is to express feelings … from the creation of them by the composers or the writers or the painters, to our recreation of them in performing, to the receiving of them from the audience’s perspective.”
