Voices were heard and talents were shown at Bedell Performance Hall

Many voices were heard Oct. 22 at Bedell Performance Hall on Southeast’s River Campus for the fall choir concert “The World Around Us.”

The concert was under the direction Barbara Lamont, professor of choral activities at Southeast.

The voices were not only singing with rehearsed technique, but the performers also sang in several languages. There were a total of seven languages spoken out of the 11 pieces performed, including Italian, German, Swedish, “Nonsense” language, Haitian Creole, Xhosa and Mandarain. Xhosa is a South African language that uses clicking on constants of the words.

Lamont has a learning process for the students when teaching new languages; She mentioned there are several resources used by musicians to understand foreign languages.

“I used some resources I found online. Often, there are things in the music that have a phonetic guide for us, called the International Phonetic Alphabet,” Lamont says. “That is a standard set of symbols that mean a specific thing as far as what a vowel and a consonant sound like.”

However, some are already familiar to the students. “Some of them are languages we normally already teach and learn as voice students like Italian and German,” Lamont said.

There was also some assistance from professors with the languages.

Southeast junior Even Short said his experience with singing so many different languages was hard at first.

“When you are learning how to pronounce all the different letters, you can mix them up a lot,” Short said. “So, it was a process of making sure I knew what rules went with each language. But, it all started to come together really well.”

To find pieces for the theme of the concert, Lamont mentioned she began looking for concert pieces in Southeast’s well-stocked choral library.

“I was searching around for things that would represent a variety of cultures, based on what we already owned and supplementing it from here,” Lamont said.

The show also included a collaboration with the Southeast Horn Choir and the Percussion Ensemble, under the direction of professors Nicolas Kenny and Shane Mizicko.

Lamont directs all choirs at Southeast, including the University Choir, the Chamber Choir and the Choral Union group. With powerful voices and a strong conductor, the choirs are continuously growing their musical talents each year.

The next concert will be in Shuck Recital Hall on the River Campus in the Spring with a theme titled “To Singing and To Music.”

With this theme, Lamont mentioned what types of pieces will be chosen for the Spring Concert.

“This will include different vocal genres, emphasize singing, different ways of singing, different tone qualities, and music that is music talking about music,” Lamont said.