This weekend the Athens Master Chorale will perform its annual spring concert, with a wide array of choral classics as well as contemporary and folk music.
Since its inception in 1989, the 50-plus member volunteer chorus has served as a professional- level choral group with deep ties to the community, a long legacy and a history of high-quality shows. Athens Master Chorale has performed as part of the Athena Grand Opera, appeared in multiple music festivals, and has performed major choral works at Asheville’s Biltmore and Carnegie Hall.
The chorale’s founder, Joseph Napoli, was the director and conductor of the group for 35 years. Last year Napoli stepped down as conductor, though he still sings regularly with the group.
The group’s new conductor, Justin Han, is taking the group in an exciting direction in his inaugural year. Young, talented and ambitious, Han holds masters degrees in both choral conducting and piano performance from Georgia State University. He has taught chorus across Atlanta, was the artistic director for the Stone Mountain Chorus and is currently a biology instructor at Georgia State University’s Perimeter College.
For fans of earlier Athens Master Chorale performances, this year’s spring concert may be a pleasant surprise with more folk, spiritual and contemporary music than past concerts, but with a traditional backbone centered around major choral works. Thematically, this year’s concert strives to reach high concepts.
The concert is evocatively titled “The Sound of Distant Voices,” and it is a musical journey through the full spectrum of human emotion. The concert takes the audience from joy to grief, longing to anger, but with a throughline of resilience. It’s a reminder to learn from the past, whether through our own struggles or through those of our ancestors.
The concert opens with “Loch Lomond,” a Scottish folk song, before transitioning to “Arirang,” a Korean folk song that holds special significance to Han as a Korean American.
“Arirang” translates roughly to “my beloved one,” and was written approximately 600 years ago. The song has endured many transformations and adaptations since its inception, and in the early 20th century “Arirang” somewhat unexpectedly became a symbol of Korean resistance against the occupying Japanese.
Singing patriotic songs was banned under Japanese rule, so “Arirang,” with its themes of love and longing, became a rallying cry for Korean nationalism. The song will be performed with percussion accompaniment by traditional Korean drums.
The show will also include “Fern Hill,” an arrangement of the Dylan Thomas poem of the same name, as well as the contemporary choral work “Let My Love Be Heard.”
“Let My Love Be Heard” is perhaps most well known for its performance in honor of Nohemi Gonzalez, a California State University student who was killed in a 2015 terrorist attack while studying abroad in Paris.
Subsequently, the group will perform its major choral work, Antonín Dvořák’s “Romance, Op. 11,” followed by Ola Gjeilo’s “Dark Night of The Soul” and its sequel “Luminous Night of The Soul,” the spiritual “My Soul’s Been Anchored By The Lord” and will close with “Over The Rainbow.”
Lisa Yarn, board member and longtime vocalist of the Athens Master Chorale, said she’s excited to see the recent influx of younger participants spurred on by Han’s arrival as conductor.
“He’s brought in all younger people, 10 new people, and it’s really cool,” Yarn said.
The entry of new voices signifies a regeneration in the ranks of the chorale, a passing of the torch while still remaining faithful to the vision laid out by Napoli in 1989. Yarn said they’re excited by the new vocalists, some of whom are in university and high school.
The Athens Master Chorale’s spring concert will be held on May 10 at the Hugh Hodgson Concert Hall at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $15 for adults and $7.50 for children and students, and can be purchased online at pac.uga.edu.
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