Review: 25th Anniversary Concert
The Princeton Girlchoir Celebrates Its 25th Anniversary at Trenton War Memorial
Written by Nancy Plum
Read the original article on the Town Topics Website HERE
The Princeton Girlchoir pulled out all the stops this past weekend for its 25th Anniversary concert. Founded by music educator Jan Westrick and currently under the leadership of Artistic Director Lynnel Joy Jenkins, the Princeton Girlchoir (PGC) has provided an incomparable performance outlet to hundreds of Princeton area girls in its history. All six choirs of the PGC program performed in Sunday afternoon’s concert at Trenton War Memorial’s Patriot’s Theater, with all conductors and accompanists also taking part. There were 30 selections on the program, which may seem like a large number, but the range of repertoire both covered the varied musical taste of PGC’s history and captured the overriding message of PGC throughout the years to celebrate the power of girls’ voices.
The 250 girls of the PGC program are divided into six choruses ranging from youngest to oldest, and the training ensemble Grace Notes started things off Sunday afternoon. Conductor Melissa Malvar-Keylock introduced the clear and youthful sound of this younger choir with her own co-arrangement (with Jill Fridersdorf) of the technically difficult “Laudamus Te” from Mozart’s Mass in C minor. This aria is a hard enough piece for an accomplished soloist, but this arrangement removed some of the tougher coloratura and left Mozart’s long melodic lines to the chorus, accompanied by pianist Todd Simmons and flutist Jessica Renshaw. These young singers showed in their selection’s crisp endings an open and free sound.
Each chorus in the PGC program sang a few selections, some in combination with each other, with pieces showing technical difficulty and supporting the goal of fostering in the choristers a lifelong love of music. The Quarter Notes, conducted by Fred Meads, reaffirmed a message of youth in Mac Huff’s arrangement of David Mallet’s “The Garden Song,” made famous in the folk music world by Pete Seeger. Accompanied by Ms. Renshaw’s obbligato flute, the choristers of the Quarter Notes sang with the trademark PGC clear sound, easily maintaining two separate parts.
The complexity of music for Sunday afternoon’s concert proved to be commensurate with the age of the chorister. Ms. Malvar-Keylock returned to the stage with the Semi-tones, showing the same clarity of tone which runs through all the ensembles. Tom Shelton, conductor of the upper-high school age Cantores, showed himself from the outset to be a clear and demanding conductor, leaving no doubt as to what he wanted from the singers. He drew a strong sound from the Cantores, with a rich and pure sound from the top sopranos and exact tuning in the arrangement of Schumann’s lieder “Widmung.” The Hungarian “Fülemüle” was sung with typical Eastern European speed of text and precision more characteristic of a college choir.
The older choristers in the PGC family perform in Cantores, as well as the more advanced Concert Choir and the select Ensemble, both conducted by Lynnel Joy Jenkins. With the Ensemble, Ms. Jenkins showed her choral pedagogy to be a shared experience between conductor and singer by standing not in front of the chorus but to the side, joining the choristers in singing the music. Ms. Jenkins sang alto with the Ensemble in Duruflé’s motet “Tota pulchra es,” stepping in only to close the piece, and the Ensemble showed particular vocal independence in Victor Young’s “When I Fall in Love.” The Concert Choir showed pure intervals with the “Flower Duet” (“Dôme Épais”) from Delibes’ opera Lakmé, and Ms. Jenkins showed that she has clearly imparted a good sense of rhythm to the singers in a saucy performance of Leadbelly’s “Bring me Little Water, Silvy.”
As with many Princeton Girlchoir performances, alumnae join the Girlchoir for final selections, in this case, a piece commissioned from PGC accompanist Ryan Brechmacher for the 25th anniversary. “A Life of Song,” sung by the all the girls in the Girlchoir and the Alumnae Choir, summarized the PGC mission in its text “I want to live a life of song,” and as conducted by Ms. Jenkins, showed the precision and choral blend of the choirs. A performance of the duet “For Good” from the musical Wicked, conducted by founding director Jan Westrick, was also an appropriate choice to acknowledge the bonding experience of being part of the Princeton Girlchoir.
