Vicksburg Chamber Choir to perform at Southern Heritage Cultural Center

Published 8:32 pm Friday, October 21, 2016

 

The Vicksburg Chamber Choir is moving from its standard venue to the courtyard of the Southern Heritage Cultural Center on Adams Street 3 p.m. Sunday for a concert featuring the music of Appalachia.

Called the “Bluegrass Buffet,” the program will present a mix of blue grass and Appalachian songs and instrumentals performed by the choir and accompanying musicians.

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“We did this last year,” said Lisa Reid, chamber choir president. “We did an outdoor concert for the first time since I’ve been performing with the chamber choir, and it was very well attended and very well-received, and our group enjoyed it.

“It was the same type of music, blue grass, Appalachian-type music. We had a good turnout of our regular patrons and the Southern Cultural members. We had a good group in the courtyard, we had good weather; I think we’ll have good weather this year.”

“All of the music has either blue grass or Appalachian roots,” choir director Sharon Penley said. “We’ve got secular and sacred, we’ve got some fun songs and we’ve got a lot of traditional Appalachian sacred music. It’s real exciting music, and it’s all music from Appalachia.”

“It’s a nice relaxing Sunday afternoon,” Reid said. “Bring your lawn chair, bring your blanket. A lot of the music is sacred hymns, but there are some light-hearted fun pieces, and some of the work will be instrumental to showcase the talent of the musicians.

“We do like to kind of mix it up and let our listeners enjoy different types of music,” she said. “We’ll have a Christmas concert on the 13th of December, and in the spring, we do a major work, and those are classical in nature.”

The usual venue for the choir is First Presbyterian Church, but Reid said the inspiration to seek a different concert location once a year was pushed by an effort to build a broader audience, “and I think we’ve accomplished that.”

“We just wanted to do something a little bit different and reach out to as many people in the community as we can, and when you perform different kinds of music, you attract different audiences,” she said.

Blue grass, she said, is a different type of music that attracts a certain audience, and canon, or sacred music, attracts a different kind of listener.

“This will be fun, and we’re offering refreshments,” she said. “We do not charge admission, but we’ll have baskets for donations, and we encourage people to be generous, because we have to pay our musicians, and we do operate as a nonprofit.”

 

About John Surratt

John Surratt is a graduate of Louisiana State University with a degree in general studies. He has worked as an editor, reporter and photographer for newspapers in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. He has been a member of The Vicksburg Post staff since 2011 and covers city government. He and his wife attend St. Paul Catholic Church and he is a member of the Port City Kiwanis Club.

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