The East Tennessee State University Chorale and the East Tennessee Children’s Choir will combine their voices for the Chorale’s annual Spring Concert on Friday, April 23, at 7:30 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church, 105 S. Boone Street.This will be the first time the two choral ensembles have joined together for a choral production. They will present Gian Carlo Menotti’s dramatic cantata, “The Death of the Bishop of Brindisi,” which is based on the story of the Children’s crusades.

The ETSU Chorale, under the direction of Dr. Thomas Jenrette, will represent the townspeople, and the East Tennessee Children’s Choir (ETCC), directed by Jane DeLoach Morison, will represent the children who try to rescue the Holy Land from the Infidels.

The ETCC was founded in 1987 by the late Dr. Carl King, a professor of music at ETSU. Its parent organization, the Mountain Empire Children’s Choral Academy (MECCA), includes choirs for singers in early elementary through high school.

Morison, artistic director of the MECCA, graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor of music education degree from ETSU, where she was a recipient of a four-year Floyd Cramer Performance Scholarship and was twice named Most Outstanding Music Student. She received her master of music degree from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro and has also studied at L’académie de musique de Sion in Switzerland. She serves on the faculty of both the Summer Piano Camp at ETSU and the Virginia Suzuki Institute at Emory and Henry College, Emory, Va. A frequent adjudicator, accompanist, recitalist and clinician, she also maintains a private piano and voice studio.

The role of the Bishop will be sung by baritone Mark Owen Davis, director of music ministries at First Presbyterian Church of Kingsport.

Davis now specializes in the Verdi repertoire after a 30-year career performing a wide range of music in recital, oratorio and opera.

From the world premiere of Milhaud’s “Les Malheurs d’Orphée” to the standard Grand Opera repertoire, he has sung leading roles in over 30 operas, most recently the title role of “Rigoletto” with the Asheville (N.C.) Lyric Opera and as Germont in “La Traviata” with the Symphony of the Mountains, Kingsport.

Davis, who has made solo appearances throughout the United States and abroad, has performed and recorded numerous times at Carnegie Hall and in France as a member and bass section leader of the Robert Shaw Festival Singers.

The role of the Nun will be sung by mezzo soprano Karen Smith, a member of the voice faculty and director of the Opera Workshop program in the ETSU Department of Music.

The free public concert also includes a performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Jesu, Priceless Treasure” by the Chorale, which will be joined by the ETCC for John Tavener’s “Alleluia. May Flights of Angels Sing Thee to Thy Rest.”

For more information or special assistance for those with disabilities, call the ETSU Department of Music at 423- 439-4276 or Jenrette at 439-6949.

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