Dr. André Thomas
Hickory – The Hickory Choral Society transforms lives through performance, support of music education, and the advancement of social harmony in the North Carolina Foothills and beyond.
The Hickory Choral Society’s October 20 Fall Concert with guest conductor Dr. André Thomas will provide an opportunity to live out all three dimensions of the mission above and do so in exciting and unprecedented ways! The performance will surely be transformative, as the audience will experience HCS singers and an orchestra performing music composed and conducted by one of the most celebrated choral musicians of our time, André Thomas. The centerpiece of the concert will be a performance of Thomas’s multi-movement work, Mass: A Celebration of Love and Joy. Lenoir-Rhyne University graduate and Hickory’s own LaKeisha Ross-Johnson will serve as the soprano soloist. Inspired by the traditional Latin texts of the Roman Mass, the music is in the gospel style and accompanied by a full orchestra. The first half of the program will include shorter selections by Thomas, including his beloved arrangement of the African American Spiritual “Keep Your Lamps”, a staple of the choral repertoire found in libraries across the country.
HCS support of music education will also be a visible element of the fall concert. A select choir of 40 singers from 10 area high schools, the Lenoir-Rhyne Youth Chorus, and singers from Lenoir-Rhyne University, Caldwell Community College and TI, and Catawba Valley Community College will all participate. Through his work as a festival conductor around the country and world, André Thomas has inspired thousands of young singers to love the choral art, and we are fortunate that this performance will provide area students with a choral experience they will remember for the rest of their lives.
Finally, we again find ourselves in another highly divisive and polarized election season. The fall concert will seek to challenge barriers to social harmony, including age, political differences, campus/town and rural/urban divisions, race, ethnicity, status, gender, and more, as hundreds of people join together for the common goal of making transformative music performance as a single ensemble. The power of music will be on full display as the Hickory Choral Society and a large cross section of the region’s choral community performs under the baton of guest conductor André Thomas.
Hickory Choral Society sincerely thanks the Concert Underwriters for their support of this concert including Arts Culture Catawba, NC Arts Council, and Kenneth K. Millholland and Suzanne G. Millholland Endowment Fund.
An effort of this magnitude that helps us live out our mission in such a meaningful way would not be possible without your support. Thank you!
We hope to see you in Lenoir-Rhyne’s P.E. Monroe Auditorium on Sunday, October 20 for our 3 PM concert!
Hickory Choral Society concerts are free and open to the public.
Visit www.hickorychoralsociety.org for more information and membership details.
