Suncook Valley Chorale Does Some Reminiscing: VIDEO

Three times this weekend, the Suncook Valley Chorale will perform some of its favorite songs during its program at the First Congregational Church.

The Chorale has been around for more than three decades usually playing two programs a year, one late in the winter and another in the spring.

Scott Lounsbury, a music teacher at Belmont middle and high schools, has been the Chorale director since 2001. He said this collection of songs allowed the singers to “pleased a wide variety of tastes” in one show.

Joe Short, the president of the board, said the all-volunteer, non-audition community group has chosen some of its favorite pieces during the last 10 years of shows and put them in an auditory smorgasbord of sorts.

“As most of our chorale concerts do, it runs the gamut,” he said of the collection.

For these shows, the Chorale will offer an opera piece, “The Anvil Chorus,” with a live anvil, to folk tunes, spirituals, like “Down By the Riverside,” and seasonal things, like “Sleigh Ride,” as well as other songs, he said.

“I think, for all intent and purposes, for our audience and the chorus, it’s pretty diverse,” he said.

“Anvil,” the Italian opera, sounds just like you would expect it too but surprisingly strong for an “amateur” chorus, bellowing and powerful, with a loud banging clang of the anvil, slamming the song home.

Lounsbury said it was like “looking over good memories … with the mood changing fairly frequently.” He said it was an opportunity to “clean off the files and dust off some old favorites.”

The program opener, “Come Travel with Me,” is a contemporary piece, he said, that serves as a way of grabbing the audience and pulling them in. 

“It’s an invitation to the listener to … we’re going to go on a little journey of song here,” Lounsbury said, “so come with us.”

Short has been singing with the Chorale for about eight years. He said a number of the songs are familiar to the regular choir members and some will need a bit more work.

At any given time, as many as 60 members can be performing with the group, Lounsbury noted.

Short’s favorite song of the concert is “Dirait-on,” a Morten Lauridsen piece, that he said will send shivers up the spine.

“It has some harmonies in there that, if we do them right, will just make the entire audience go, ‘Ohhhhh,’” he said.