Choir Performs Original Composition

At the choir concert last Wednesday, the  East Choraliers premiered a song called “Everlasting Voices” by Eric Barnum. The song had never been performed in front of an audience before.

A few years ago, the Choraliers had the opportunity to have a piece commissioned for them using money set aside from a donation to the SME Choir Boosters. The money allowed choir director Ken Foley to approach Barnum, a young, up-and-coming composer who writes music for choirs all over the country, about writing a piece specifically for the East Choraliers.

“We’re in for a treat tonight, all of us,” Foley said at the concert while introducing the song. “This is the first time that anyone in the country or world has heard this piece of music.”

“Everlasting Voices” is a dramatic piece with intense climaxes and contrasting melodies. The song features a prominent piano accompaniment, and its lyrics are taken from the poem of the same by William Butler Yeats.

“It’s definitely a song for a big choir,” junior and Choraliers singer Clara Martin said. “It’s very modern with a lot of modern tonality, and a lot of clashes and such. The piano accompaniment is pretty and a little eerie.”

The choir will also be performing the song at the East Area Choral Festival Oct. 29 as well as during their trip to Spain over spring break next year.

View a recording of the whole choir concert, including “Everlasting Voices”, here:

O sweet everlasting voices be still;
Go to the guards of the heavenly fold
And bid them wander obeying your will
Flame under flame, till time be no more;
Have you not heard that our hearts are old,
That you call in birds, in wind on the hill,
In shaken boughs, in tide on the shore?
O sweet everlasting voices be still.