TEXARKANA CHORALE HEADED TO CARNEGIE HALL AGAIN,
The upcoming Texarkana Regional Chorale season features a crowning accomplishment in the musical world with yet another trip to Carnegie Hall for our local choir.
This will be the third trip to New York City’s famed venue. The TRC heads to NYC for a Carnegie Hall tour from April 25 to April 29 next year with a Saturday, April 28, performance of Haydn’s “Mariazeller Mass.”
The Chorale’s season begins Aug. 29 with the first rehearsal. New Chorale members must sign up for a vocal placement audition that night. If interested, email txkregionalchorale@gmail.com.
Other performances on tap for the TRC include an outdoor concert at CHRISTUS St. Michael Imaging Center on Tuesday, Oct. 3, 5:30 p.m.; “American Sounds” in the Texarkana College Truman Arnold Center Great Room on Tuesday, Nov. 14, 6:30 p.m.; Christmas concert with the Texarkana Symphony Orchestra at the Perot Theatre on Sunday, Dec. 10, at 4 p.m.; Mardi Gras Special concert on Tuesday, Feb. 13; and the Haydn Mass Concert at Sacred Heart Catholic Church on Friday, April 20, 7:30 p.m.
Marc-André Bougie, the Chorale’s music director and conductor, agrees that it’s a big year for the TRC. “We’ve got some great programs and we’re going to end the season with a tour at Carnegie Hall,” he said.
Previous Carnegie visits include a 2007 mass chorus performance and, in 2010, a solo performance with Mary Scott Goode, the TRC’s pianist, and singing with an Italian orchestra.
This next Carnegie trip, Bougie will conduct the New England Symphonic Ensemble with the TRC and other invited choirs (Veritas Academy, Liberty-Eylau High School, Texarkana College students, in addition to
other regional choirs chosen to participate).
“It’s a four-day tour,” Bougie said. For him, it’s a chance to conduct a unique event.
The fall’s CHRISTUS event will be held outdoors, a first for the TRC. “We thought the fall season would be ideal,” Bougie said. He’d been talking with CHRISTUS for some time about it and says it was time to get it done. The weather is a variable, but they can move inside if needed.
The “American Sounds” concert will feature American composers. “That’s become a very popular program that we do. We intend to keep doing it,” the conductor said. Following that, it’s the annual concert with the TSO.
Post-Christmas, the TRC will prepare for Carnegie Hall. The piece they’re performing is a masterworks piece lasting about 35 minutes. Haydn wrote it when he was in his 50s, Bougie said. The TRC has performed it successfully before.
“It’s a piece from his maturity. Very uplifting, exciting piece of music,” Bougie said. They’ll perform the same work for the April 20 preview concert here in Texarkana. And the Carnegie Hall concert will be a special treat for the singers, no matter the age.
“You get a chance to do it maybe once in your life, if you’re lucky,” Bougie said. “For many of us, it will be the third time, you know.” And when they walk on stage, he admits, they sense the magic of the venue.
“It’s beautiful, first of all, and it does sound amazing,” Bougie said. There’s the wooden stage, red seats. “The visual of Carnegie Hall is very powerful,” the conductor said of these first-rate facilities. Concerts there draw a large audience, too.
“It will be a changing experience, a life-changing experience for all the young people to bring in and the young-at-hearts of every age, including yours truly,” Bougie said.
The Mardi Gras show details have yet to be announced, but Bougie has felt for a while that something should be done as a concert to celebrate Mardi Gras here.
TRC rehearsals are held in the Stilwell Humanities Building’s music hall at Texarkana College.
(Tuition is $12o for the year, $70 for a semester. Qualified high school and middle school students can sing with TRC for a $10 music fee per semester. Texarkana College also offers college credit for TRC. There’s a separate fee schedule for the Carnegie Hall tour. More info: txkregionalchorale@gmail.com.)