Submitted by Saint Martin’s University
LACEY, WASHINGTON —Saint Martin’s University students will join the Opera Pacifica Chorus and the Olympia Chamber Orchestra in their seventh annual collaborative concert, featuring Rossini’s Stabat Mater, on Sunday, Feb. 24. The event starts at 7:30 p.m. in the University’s Marcus Pavilion, 5300 Pacific Ave. SE. Tickets are $10 and are for sale at the door.
“Rossini’s Stabat Mater comes out of the Bel Canto tradition,” says Associate Professor of Music and Saint Martin’s University Chorale Director Darrell Born. “The work is rich with beautiful singing, heavily influenced by operatic drama while still reverent and sacred.”
The evening is part of the Olympia Chamber’s season, so the orchestra will present other pieces. Three soloists will also be featured: soprano Christina Kowalski-Holian, mezzo soprano Dawn Padula and tenor Robert Corl.
“Professor Born is also singing one of the solo roles in this great work,” says Claudia Simpson-Jones, director of both the Opera Pacifica Chorus and the Olympia Chamber Orchestra. “I think students enjoy hearing their teachers perform. It promotes respect and confidence that they are in good hands.”
Simpson-Jones calls it a “treat” to be performing again with the Saint Martin’s Chorale. “I have always looked forward to working with Darrell Born and his dedicated and talented students,” she says.
“I am so thrilled that Olympia Chamber Orchestra and Opera Pacifica are able to enrich our students and the campus community by sharing their time, energy, maturity and artistry with us,” says Born.
Saint Martin’s University is an independent four-year, coeducational university located on a wooded campus of more than 300 acres in Lacey, Washington. Established in 1895 by the Catholic Order of Saint Benedict, the University is one of 14 Benedictine colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, and the only one west of the Rocky Mountains. Saint Martin’s University prepares students for successful lives through its 23 majors and seven graduate programs spanning the liberal arts, business, education, nursing and engineering. Saint Martin’s welcomes more than 1,100 undergraduate students and 400 graduate students from many ethnic and religious backgrounds to its Lacey campus, and 300 more undergraduate students to its extension campuses located at Joint Base Lewis-McChord and Centralia College. Visit the Saint Martin’s University website at www.stmartin.edu.
