Music in Beaufort: Winthrop University choirs & Beaufort High School “Voices” to perform
Winthrop University choirs & Beaufort High School “Voices” to perform
Winthrop Chorale
The Winthrop Chorale and the Winthrop Chamber Singers will perform a concert at The Parish Church of St. Helena (Episcopal) this coming Monday evening, November 16. The ensembles tour bi-annually under the direction of Winthrop’s director of choral activities, Dr. Katherine Kinsey, During their 2009 fall tour the ensembles are performing throughout coastal South Carolina and in Columbia, the state capital.
Winthrop University is located in Rock Hill, SC, between Columbia and Charlotte. The Winthrop Chorale, the university’s principal touring choir, is a 50-voice, auditioned ensemble that has been featured with the Charleston and Charlotte Symphonies and in state and regional conventions.
Winthrop Chamber Singers
The Winthrop Chamber Singers will also be featured. They are a select ensemble of 24 singers specializing in acapella music from the Renaissance to the present century.
The Winthrop groups have been featured in high profile events throughout the state including the Choral Artist Series at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston. The repertoire for this concert will include works by Brahms, Schutz, Whitacre, Argento, Stroope, Childs, and Gawthrop.
Chris Homyk of Beaufort will be among the Winthrop singers. Chris was graduated last spring from Beaufort High School. He is one of very few freshmen accepted into the Winthrop Chorale. He was also chosen for the even more select Chamber Singers ensemble. While at Beaufort High, Chris was in the school’s Voices where he was featured as a soloist.
Preceding the Winthrop singers, Beaufort High School’s Voices will perform. Voices is a 90-member advanced choral ensemble under the direction of Victor Varner.
The Beaufort High School Voices have grown from 19 to 90 singers over the past six years. Using a highly disciplined “Solfege” technique, Varner’s students learn advanced sight-reading skills and perform songs of all genres with an emphasis on both classical works and vocal jazz.
Created this year, the Beaufort High School InnerVoices is a smaller vocal jazz ensemble representing the more advanced Voices singers. The InnerVoices will be performing at the New York Jazz Festival at Lincoln Center in February and during the Voices’ winter and spring concerts.
Vic Varner, the director of the Voices and the InnerVoices, is in his sixth year as director of choral music at Beaufort High School. He obtained his masters degree is music education from Winthrop University, where he sang in the Winthrop Chorale and was assistant director of the Winthrop University Jazz Voices. He remained in Rock Hill for 15 years as choral music director at Northwestern High School. One of his ensembles there achieved the highest score in the North American Music Festival’s Jazz Division.
The joint Winthrop and Beaufort High concert begins at 7 p.m. this coming Monday. It is free and open to the public. The venue, The Parish Church of St. Helena (Episcopal), is one of the oldest and most historic churches in South Carolina. It is located at 707 Church Street in historic downtown Beaufort.
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