MSU State Singers welcome school choirs for annual colloquium

Contact: Sasha Steinberg

Performing here with the Starkville-MSU Symphony Orchestra, the Mississippi State University State Singers are welcoming middle and high school musicians from Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Tennessee Sunday-Monday [Sept. 11 and 12] for the university’s sixth annual Choral Colloquium. (Photo by Megan Bean)

STARKVILLE, Miss.—The Mississippi State University State Singers are welcoming middle and high school musicians from Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Tennessee Sunday-Monday [Sept. 11 and 12] for the university’s sixth annual Choral Colloquium.

Free to all, the two-day event is sponsored by MSU’s nationally accredited Department of Music.

The colloquium schedule includes:

Sunday

—8:30 p.m. in Lee Hall’s Bettersworth Auditorium, honor choir concert featuring the MSU State Singers, Choctaw High School Madrigal Singers led by Sue Tarver, and the John Carroll Catholic High School Mixed Ensemble led by Maria Wilson.

Monday

—2:30 p.m., honor choir final concerts at First Baptist Church in Starkville.

Director of Choral Activities Anthony Sears of Isidore Newman School in New Orleans, Louisiana, will conduct the middle school honor choir, while Director of Choral Activities Jeffery Redding from West Orange High School in Winter Garden, Florida, will lead the high school group.

Sandra Snow is directing the MSU State Singers’ Sunday evening performance. She is professor of conducting and music education at Michigan State University.  

Snow also will lead sessions for teachers interested in obtaining continuing education units. For information on CE registration and cost, visit http://www.statesings.com/State_Sings/Choral_Home.html.

Gary Packwood, MSU’s director of choral activities, said the colloquium is another example of continuing efforts by “the entire faculty in the department to increase our visibility, strengthen our reputation as an outstanding place for cultivating the very best musicians and people and become a central location for global research in the arts.”

An associate professor, he also expressed appreciation for “the support of the music department faculty throughout the past five years.”

For more colloquium information, contact Packwood at 662-325-3490 or GPackwood@colled.msstate.edu.

For more on MSU’s Department of Music, visit www.music.msstate.edu.

MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.