Millsaps College Choral Music

Choral Music at Millsaps College began in 1935 when John Alvin "Pop" King founded the Millsaps Singers. Pop King established a tradition of dedicated choral study at a high level. Today, the division of Choral Music has expanded to include two ensembles, the Millsaps Singers and Chamber Singers, led by Dr. Timothy Coker. The Millsaps Singers is the oldest music performance organization at the College. Membership in The Singers is open to all students by audition. Each year Singers performs a variety of accompanied and a ca****la music for the College and community, and usually offers at least one performance with a professional orchestra. The Millsaps Singers traditionally perform a fall concert, a Christmas concert, and two spring concerts. Music for Singers includes a highly diverse repertoire of masterworks, international and ethnic works, and recent additions to the choral repertory. Academic credit is awarded for participation each semester. Special opportunities are available to students through our affiliation with professional performance organizations in the metropolitan Jackson area. Most recently, the Millsaps Singers and other local choirs collaborated with The Mississippi Symphony Orchestra in MSO's March, 2006 performance of Francis Poulenc's Gloria and in their March, 2010 performance of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2 "The Resurrection." In the Spring of 2011, Singers will again join with other area choirs and MSO to present Beethoven's 9th symphony. Chamber Singers was formed in 1993 to provide the college with a touring choir of reasonable size. The primary mission of the ensemble was to take choral presentations of high quality to United Methodist congregations in Mississippi. The highly selective membership of Chamber Singers is drawn from the Millsaps Singers, the College's large choral ensemble. Sixteen to twenty-four singers are selected annually to comprise Chamber Singers, and each receives a scholarship for service. In addition to concerts for United Methodist congregations in Mississippi, the choir takes annual national or international tours. Destination cities have included Chicago, Washington D.C., San Antonio, Orlando, and New York City. Chamber Singers have also traveled to sing in St. Louis, Cincinnati, Louisville, Nashville, and Chattanooga. Past concert itineraries have featured international tours to Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Spain and Portugal, England, and most recently Greece. The repertoire for Chamber Singers centers on important sacred literature - both a ca****la and accompanied, and includes American folk hymns and spirituals as well as classical selections. Much of the literature is drawn from music accessible to many church choirs. For additional information about either ensemble, please contact us.

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