Baylor Bella Voce and A Cappella choir are holding a performance in the Glennis McCrary Music Building at Jones Hall at 7:30 p.m. tonight.
Bella Voce is a highly select women’s ensemble composed primarily of undergraduate and graduate music majors, but is also open to non-majors based on successful audition according to their website.
Dr. Lynne Gackle, professor of ensembles in the school of music and conductor and founder of Baylor Bella Voce and conductor of the Baylor concert choir Dr. Lynne Gackle said, Bella Voce has a total of 30 girls who are part of the ensemble and what unities the group is that they’ve all had a lot of choral experience.
“They’re not novices by any stretch of the imagination,” Gackle said. “It’s a high level women’s choir.”
The ensemble was started when Gackle came to Baylor and its first season was in 2011. Gackle said, a reason she started the group was because of all the wonderful talent she saw at Baylor. She added that she saw the opportunity for a different type of women’s choir as well.
“This is an opportunity to really dig in and do some difficult music and beautiful music written just for women’s’ voices,” Gackle said.
Auditions to become part of Bella Voce are held every spring in April and it consists of singing and doing sight reading Gackle said.
“Texas does a really good job of teaching [sight reading] in their school systems for the most part,” Gackle said. “It is a learned skill set that they need to have pretty good command of to be in this group.”
Gackle added that the group is dedicating their first song, ‘Christ the Apple Tree,’ to Dr. Diana Garland, who died Sept. 21 of this year. She was the founding dean of the School of Social Work. Gackle said, she would encourage students and faculty and staff to come to today’s performance because it is going to be very special.
They will also be performing ‘Magnificat’ by Kim Arnesen, which is a seven movement work and features several soloist.
“It’s truly some fantastic beautiful writing and the girls voices are impeccable and we have some fabulous soloists,” Gackle said.
Brownsville senior Jennifer Moser said she decided to audition for Bella Voce because she wanted to get involved in a choir as she was finishing her undergrad career at Baylor.
“I’m very excited that I’ve been selected to be part of this wonderful group,” Moser said.
Moser said her favorite part of being part of Bella Voce is making friends with all the people involved in the ensemble.
“I’ve also loved learning from Dr. Gackle about how to become a better singer and a better musician,” Moser said.
Baylor A Cappella choir, on the other hand, is the premier choral ensemble, is selected by competitive audition and the 60 voice choir performs a wide variety of musical styles.
Brownsville senior Zach Barba, president of A Cappella choir said he would encourage people to come to tonight’s because the music will be great and will feature a great variety of music. Barba added that one of the pieces the group is performing is ‘Only in Sleep’ by Eriks Esenvalds and the hymn ‘Love divine, all loves excelling’ arranged by Mack Wilberg.
“It’s something different that we offer on campus that people don’t usually go out of their way to go to,” Barba said. “I think if they were to go, they’d be pleasantly surprised by how good our choir actually is.”
Barba said his favorite part of being part of A Cappella is the community he has become a part of through the years.
“I love making music with so many other talented people,” Barba said. “We’ve always performed at such a high level, which is something that I really like about performing with the choir.”
