RCS Turns 100

The Radcliffe Choral Society (RCS) celebrates 100 years of choral music at Radcliffe with a series of two concerts to be given tonight and Saturday at 8:00 p.m. in Sanders Theater.

According to RCS Choral Director Beverly Taylor, Friday's performance centers around four short choral pieces, each of which will be performed by a different choral group. The pieces were chosen to reflect a diversity of choral styles and will include "Rennaisance, Romantic period, 20th century and light choral works," Taylor said. The Worcester Polytechnical Institute Women's Chorale, the Mt. Holyoke College Chamber Singers and the Winsor School Small Chorus will sing with RCS for the Friday performance.

Saturday's show presents two longer programs and will be performed by RCS, which has about 60 members, along with the Cornell Women's Chorus.

RCS plans to debut two commissioned works this weekend. On Friday the choir will sing "Daughter Awake with the Moon," an original composition by alumna Janice E. Hamer '69, and on Saturday the women will present Robert Kyr's "Toward Eternity." Both performances will be recorded by WGBH for potential future broadcast.

Vice President of RCS Stacey A. Street '90 said Friday night will mark the first time the chorus has performed the Hamer piece in full. She said the piece, which the choir has been rehearsing since January, is a distinctly contemporary piece without a standard melody. Although Street said the work was difficult to interpret at first, she added that the group has grown to like it.

RCS will continue its centennial celebration next year with a reunion dinner for past RCS members and a "historical concert" (currently scheduled for November 11) which will feature period music from each decade in which the RCS has been in existence, Taylor said.

Taylor added that she hopes to use the RCS centennial as a way to promote and preserve women's choral music. In addition to sponsoring the creation of new choral works and performing them for the public, RCS hopes to celebrate the centennial by assembling a compilation of "lost" choral works, choral works from their own repertoire and works from the repertoires of other choral groups.

The RCS was awarded first prize in the 1983 Welch International Eisteddfod Competition and second prize in the Dutch International Korrfest of the same year. The group is planning another world tour in 1991 and has just returned from a series of concerts in Washington, D.C.