Pilgrim festival Singers Summer Concert

Pilgrim Festival Singers, a small
ensemble drawn from the Pilgrim Festival Chorus (PFC), the region’s principal
community choral group, present their summer concert series, Broadway Melodies, on Sunday, June 29, 7:30
pm at Spire Center for Performing Arts, 25 ½ Court Street, Plymouth. The concert
consists of highlights from the American musical theater tradition, directed by
William B. Richter and accompanied by pianist Elizabeth Chapman Reilly.

Music
from four of the greatest Broadway shows will be presented in concert
performance.  Each show represents a
different period or style from this rich tradition.  The earliest, George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess (1935), takes place in
1920’s Charleston, South Carolina.  Frank
Loesser’s Guys and Dolls (1950) is
based on several short stories by Damon Runyon and follows a number of colorful
characters from New York’s underworld.  West Side Story, a collaboration of
Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, was produced in 1957.  A re-telling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in a modern setting, West Side Story tells the story of rival
gangs whose warfare leads to tragedy.  The
1996 production of Ragtime, based on
a novel of the same name by E. L. Doctorow, takes place in the first decade of
the 20th century.  Many of its
songs are in the “ragtime” style popular at that time, perfectly capturing the
excitement and heartache of a turbulent era.

This
fast-paced concert will include many of the popular solos and duets from these
shows, sung by members of the chorus, such as “Summertime,” “Tonight,” “Fugue
for Tinhorns,” “Guys and Dolls,” and “Make Them Hear You.”

Tickets
for the performances are $10.00 and may be purchased at the door, by calling
Gail at 781-826-8416, or online at www.pilgrimfestivalchorus.org.  Additional performances of this concert will
be held on Saturday, June 28, 7:30 pm at Central Congregational Church in
Middleboro, and Sunday, July 6, 7:30 pm at First Trinitarian Congregational
Church, Scituate.  For more information
on the concert or PFC, please visit their website at www.pilgrimfestivalchorus.org,
or follow Pilgrim Festival Chorus on Facebook.