The NC State Department of
Performing Arts and Technology
presents
NC State Spring Choirs Concert
University Singers
State Chorale
Nathan Leaf, conductor
Ariadna Nacianceno, pianist
With the NC State Wind Ensemble, Paul Garcia, conductor
Program
University Singers
Portraits in Historical Text
Words of Lincoln (texts by Abraham Lincoln) John Purifoy (b. 1952)
The Road Not Taken (text by Robert Frost) Randall Thompson (1899-1984)
Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor (text by Emma Lazarus) Irving Berlin (1888-1989)
Changing Portraits
The Times, They Are A-Changin’ Bob Dylan (b. 1941), arr. Adam Podd
Soloist: Emma Hall
Portraits in Water
Oconaluftee: Walking by the Cherokee River James E. Green (b. 1970)
Flute: Abby Walker
Percussion: Langley Fields, Hampton Scott, Andy Warford, Abby Weaver
Bring Me Little Water, Silvy Huddie Ledbetter(Lead Belly, 1888-1949) arr. Moira Smiley
Wade in the Water Spiritual, arr. Moses Hogan (1957-2003)
Soloists: Dasha Royal and Julie Simons
State Chorale
Self Portraits
Reflections (text by Henry David Thoreau) Jake Runestad (b. 1986)
Lift Every Voice and Sing (text by James Weldon Johnson) J. Rosamond Johnson (1873-1954), arr. Roland Carter
Regional Portraits
Shenandoah Folksong, arr. James Erb
Clementine Folksong, arr. Byunghee Oh
Soloist: Anna Muchukot
Sourwood Mountain Folksong, arr. John Rutter
Soloists: Sean Li and Sully Schwartz
Portrait of Hope
His Eye is On the Sparrow Charles Gabriel (1856-1932), arr. Zanaida Robles
Soloists: Alyssa Allen, Sivan Cabell, Mesha Strickland
Intermission
Wind Ensemble
Chester: Overture for Band William Schuman (1910-1992)
Combined Choirs and Wind Ensemble
Song of Democracy (text by Walt Whitman) Howard Hanson (1896-1981)
Welcome and Program Notes
Welcome to the concert – we are glad you are here! The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the United States’ Declaration of Independence. For our choir concerts this semester, on April 11 and April 23, we are presenting Portraits of America, with music and texts representing many of the wide variety of regions, histories, and people of this vast country. All of the works being performed tell a part of the American story.
We begin tonight with Portraits in Historical Texts, using words by authors who need no introduction to American audiences: Abraham Lincoln, Robert Frost, and Emma Lazarus, whose works are inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. Under Portraits in Water, we feature music and a topic from right here in North Carolina – the Cherokee River. The term “Oconaluftee” comes from the Cherokee village name Egwanulti, which means “by the river.” Egwanulti was once used to refer to the Cherokee communities that settled by the Oconaluftee River in Cherokee, N.C. Composer James E. Green, a North Carolina native whose late grandmother was Cherokee, continues to compose music with Cherokee texts to preserve the language for future generations.
Self Portraits includes collected texts by a quintessential American author, Thoreau, and Lift Every Voice And Sing, a work which has played a unique and integral role in American history. Regional Portraits are settings of folk songs from across the country. Chester: Overture for Band is based on a tune composed during the American Revolution by William Billings. It first appeared in 1778 in a popular book of tunes and anthems entitled “The Singing Master’s Assistant”. “Chester” was so popular that it became the song of the Revolution, sung around campfires of the Continental Army, played by their fifers on the march, and sung throughout the colonies from Vermont to South Carolina. The music and words expressed perfectly the burning desire for freedom which sustained the colonists through the difficult years of the Revolution.
The final work on the concert, Song of Democracy, is a seminal work for choir and wind band. The composer combines texts from two different poems written by the iconic American writer, Walt Whitman. One poem was written for the dedication of a public school, the other for a college graduation. This combination of words and music by the composer presents a reflection on the question of what…or perhaps, who…is the driving force at the core of the great American experiment begun 250 years ago.
Selected Texts and Translations
Words of Lincoln Abraham Lincoln
And Abraham Lincoln said,“We are not enemies, but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
-from Lincoln’s first inaugural address, 1861
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle. And for his widow, and for his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
-from Lincoln’s second inaugural address, 1865
The Road Not Taken. Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, from THE NEW COLOSSUS EMMA LAZARUS
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
The Times They are A-Changin’ Bob Dylan
The Times They are A-Changin’ Bob Dylan
The Times They are A-Changin’ Bob Dylan
Come gather ’round, people, wherever you roam
And admit that the waters around you have grown
And accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth saving
And you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times, they are a-changin’
{Come writers and critics who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide, the chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon, for the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times, they are a-changin’
Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin’
Will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times, they are a-changin’}
Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
And don’t criticize what you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times, they are a-changin’
The line, it is drawn, the curse, it is cast
The slow one now will later be fast
As the present now will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times, they are a-changin’
Oconaluftee: Walking by the Cherokee River James E Green
Sung in Cherokee; English Translation:
Oconaluftee, Cherokee River
Walking by the river, finding peace
Walking by the river, great Oconafuftee
Always free, flowing waters.
Reflections Henry David Thoreau, compiled by the composer
We live but a fraction of our life.
We do not !ll all our pores with our blood;
we do not inspire and expire fully and entirely enough,
so that the wave of each inspiration
shall break on our farthest shores,
rolling ’til it meets the sand which bounds us,
and the sound of the surf comes back to us.
Why do we not let on the “ood,
raise the gates,
and set all our wheels in motion?
There is the calmness of the lake
when there is not a breath of wind;
so it is with us.
Sometimes we are clari!ed and calmed
as we never were before.
We become like a still lake of purest crystal
and without an e#ort
our depths are revealed to ourselves.
All the world goes by us
and is re”ected in our deeps.
Such clarity!
Obtained by such pure means!
By simple living,
by honesty of purpose.
To be calm, to be serene!
Lift Every Voice and Sing. James Weldon Johnson
Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.
Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand.
True to our God,
True to our native land.
Chester: Overture for Band William Schuman
Let tyrants shake their iron rod,
And Slav’ry clank her galling chains,
We fear them not, We trust in God,
New England’s God forever reigns.
The Foe comes on with haughty stride,
Our troops advance with martial noise,
Their Vet’rans flee, before our Youth,
And Gen’rals yield to beardless Boys.
What grateful Off’ring shall we bring?
What shall we render to this Lord?
Loud Hallelujah let us sing,
And praise His Name on Ev’ry Chord.
Song Of Democracy Walt Whitman
An old man’s thoughts of school
An old man’s gathering youthful memories and
Blooms that youth itself cannot
Now only do I know You
O fair auroral skies – O morning dew upon the grass!
And these I see, these sparkling eyes
These stores of mystic meaning, these young lives
Building, equipping like a fleet of ships, immortal ships
Soon to sail out over the measureless seas
On the soul’s voyage
Only a lot of boys and girls?
Only the tiresome spelling, writing, ciphering classes?
Only a public school?
Ah more, infinitely more
And you America
Cast you the real reckoning for your present?
The lights and shadows of your future, good or evil?
To girlhood, boyhood look, the teacher and the school
Sail, Sail thy best, ship of Democracy
Of value is thy freight, ’tis not the present only
The Past is also stored in thee
Thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone
Not of thy Western continent alone
Earth’s resume entire floats on thy keel, O ship
Is steadied by thy spars
With thee Time voyages in trust, the antecedent
Nations sink or swim with thee
With all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes
Epics, wars, thou bear’st the other continents
Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination –
Port triumphant;
Steer then with good strong hand and wary eye
O helmsman, thou carriest great companions
Venerable priestly Asia sails this day with thee
And royal feudal Europe sails with thee
And royal feudal Europe sails with thee
MEET THE PERFORMERS
UNIVERSITY SINGERS
Soprano
Rasun Abdelrasoul
Georgia Allen
Natalia Chazaro-Bravo
Madison Coston
Carina Garcia
Mariah Goss
Emma Hall
Moriah Hollar
Melody Joyce
Nidhi Koneru
Sereena Kumar
Megan Macartney
Julia Scarano
Julie Simons
Caroline Underwood
Abby Walker
Kate YoblinskiMolly Young
Alto
Zoey Bailey
Alyssa DeGroff
Kaley Elliott
Langely Fields
Chloe Gray
Carolina Hennessee
Abbygail Hopkins
Miriam Kamara
Izzy McFalls
Jordon Randel
Grace Rodrigues
Dasha Royal
Ahisha Shashidhar
Sarah Shoupe
Mackenzie Strouse
Desirae Thombs
Eva Vestal
Abby Weaver
Eva Vestal
Tenor
Sana Anand
Riordan Cassidy
Henry Feng
Henry Feng
Santiago Perez
Richard Soucy
Joshua Zeigler
Bass
Sebastian Afanador
Derek Chang
Jacob Hernandez
Avery Hester
Eli Johnson
Konstantin Nafz
Marcel Plante
Pierce Plante
Matthew Ranzinger
Sadie Reese
Hampton Scott
Theo Stewart
Elijah Twiss
Andy Warfford
STATE CHORALE
Saprano
Madison Brown
Sivan Cabell
Sam Hayes
Alison Hinnant
Hayden Kocur
Maya Lennon
Anoushka Mallya
Anna Muchukot
Kyra Rizk
Anna Rushing
Eli Sandusky
Anam Siddiqi
Annalee Smith
Chloe Tackett
Abby Trantham
Alto
Alyssa Allen
Alexa Dollar
Alex Fountain
Sammie Graff
Lilian Hauser
Penny Kudlak
Allison Lassiter
Zoe Leibert
Veronica Oliech
Tsedey Pretto
Anna Russell
Mesha Strickland
Ryann Schindler
Allison Thompson
Sara Trimech
Tenor
Nic Chancafe
Caleb Homan
Michael Izzo
Jimmy Kinsella
Eli Leonard
Sean Li
Ian Livengood
Spencer Long
Chance Martin
Devon Olds
Thomas Radford
Kyle Setzer
Noah Siekierski
Ty Smoak
Bass
Rani Alsbinati
Elijah Ball
Rani Alsbinati
Elijah Ball
Kevin Ballesteros
Yi Chen
Jude Clance
Elisha Daugird
James Garrison
Max Haugh
Graham Otten
Hayden Palmer
Bennett Perry
Jack Reever
Sullivan Schwartz
Theo Stewart
Malachi Vazquez-Carr
Wind Ensemble
Flute
Dominic Nguyen
Rebecca Moore
Caitlin Potter
Mackenzie Phillips
Chloe Morton
Chloe Morton
Bailey Dugan
Oboe
Charles Ramkaransingh
Clarinet
Jordan Eilers
Jacob Timin
Kate Buckner
Claire Siegel
Maegan Nielander
Mitchell Sefton
Sela Bettoli
Indira Ha
Jacob Johnson
Thomas Reid
Mia Olgine
Pen Hunter
Faith Richards
Colin Yip
Jake Bates
Lizzie Rappaport
Emmie Cumby
Bass Clarinets
Jake Bramhall
Emily Dodson
Gavine Macrone
E Chapman
Bassoons
Erika Fetvedt
Finn Leahy
Saxes
Seth Olanovich – Alto I
Nathaniel Baird – Alto I/II
Julia Gale – Alto I/II
Nate Robinson – Alto II
Jack Fulp – Tenor
Edmund Armistead – Tenor
Katherine Fowler – Tenor
Karson Yount – Bari
Ethan Newhouse – Bari
Horn
Trevor Petzold
David Cumby
Barrett Taylor
Jonah Catlin
Elliott O’Brien
Trumpet
Owen Forbes
Adah Morton
Srikar Desemsetti
Eiad Yakout
James Rhile
Virginia Griffith
Ablam Akakpo
Bebe Staton
Cooper Bryan
Chris Bondo
Wyatt Rogers
Sofia Ortiz- Anglero
Bonnie Jo Taylor
Trombone
Jack Fitzpatrick
Harrison Fringer
Luke Sbityakov
Max Abelson
Dustin Hall
Jonathan Jenkins
Euphonium
Daniel Bailey
Matthew Pearce
Mira Misty
Tuba
Joey Carbone
Luke Ryan
Percussion
Liam Courtright
Emma Dale
Bodey Good
Emma Hamrick
Vadin Ha
Elizabeth Ingram
Alec Russell
Piano
Ronald Workman
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