Fun in the sun

When the Blue Ridge Chorale performs its spring concert, it wants the audience to feel the warmth of a July afternoon, the soft caress of freshly mowed grass and the joy that comes with the advent of summer.

The chorale performs Sunday during Culpeper’s Remembrance Days at 4 p.m. at St. Stephens Church. On May 3, it will present “In The Good Old Summertime” at 4 p.m. at St. Luke’s Lutheran.
Organizers hope the concerts will prepare folks for a memorable outdoor season.

“The last few summers we’ve done some very serious music,” BRC music director Virginia Erwin said. “I thought it would be very nice to have a change of pace. I was thinking of back when I was a kid and had the whole summer off. I just thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to capture that feeling?’”

At Sunday’s concert, the chorale group will do part of its full program, which includes standards like “Take Me Out To The Ballgame,” “Beach Boys Blast,” “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and a selection from the “Sound of Music.”

The group’s chamber choir will also perform “Be Gone Dull Care.” The chamber choir consists of six members and gives more gifted singers a chance to show their pipes.

“We’re a community choir, we are pleased to take all variety of singers,” Erwin said. “We get some singers who are extra specially wonderful. I like to pick them out and give them some special music to do. They like the challenge. It encourages good singers to come to our choir, because they know they’ll have a special section to sing in.”

Erwin is hoping that the summer selections will help warm the audience’s hearts and lift their spirits, as everyone is feeling the crunch of an economic crisis and the depression that follows it.

“They say ‘where words fail, music begins,’” Erwin said. “Music does change people, it helps people. The ancient Greeks thought that music had a direct influence on people. (Music) gives us a chance to perform and the process of singing is good for us.”

Children’s choir sings
The Blue Ridge Children’s choir will also perform at both concerts, though now the choir is actually a quartet. This spring, there are only four youth singers — James and Jordan Tamelcoff, Megan Dubby and Maria ter Weele — under the tutelage of choir director Cathy ter Weele.

With all of the spring activities, it’s hard to keep children inside, but ter Weele, a music teacher at Emerald Hill Elementary School, tries to recruit from her classes.

“I really try to talk it up at school,” she said.

Despite having only four singers, down from 16 this fall, the youth choir still sounds like a full choir on songs like the Discovery Channel theme “I Love the Mountains” and the classic “The Ashgrove.” They will also perform a medley of “Sound of Music” songs with the full choir.

“I love working with children, especially younger children,” ter Weele said. “These children are here because they like to sing, and that’s what I like to do. They really try. Most of them aren’t very shy, like adults, about singing.”

The children’s choir will try to recruit more singers this summer as it hosts a second annual summer workshop at Yowell Meadow Park from June 30 to July 30 every Tuesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to noon. The workshop is for children ages 7 to 14, and this year the singers will focus on folk songs.

“It exposes the children to music and to us as people,” ter Weele said. “They can explore that on their own, or come back on Monday nights and work with us.”

To register for the youth choir, call ter Weele at 829-8798. The cost is $35 a child, but discounts are available for multiple children.

Want to go?
What: Blue Ridge Chorale concerts
When: Remembrance Days, Sunday at 4 p.m. at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church; spring concert May 3 at 4 p.m. at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church
Cost: Remembrance Days concert, free; spring concert, $10 per adult, $25 for families
Tickets: Available at the door, online at brcsings.com or by phone at 937-2574