by PATRICK BABCOCK
Lifestyles Reporter

The Hayes School of Music will perform a Holiday Scholarship Concert at Farthing Auditorium 7:30 p.m. Friday.

“There’s brass choirs, there’s gospel choirs, jazz vocal ensembles, our treble choir, a woodwind quintet, the men’s glee club, a flute ensemble, our University Singers, a euphonium and tuba quartet and our full orchestra does ‘Sleigh Ride’ every year,” Sharpe Chair Scott R. Meister said. “It’s a logistic nightmare.”

A former dean established the concert several years ago so the entire school could get together and perform.

The Men’s Glee Club performs at the 2005 Holiday Scholarship Concert. Photo by Alisha Park

The concert is unique in its configuration, he said.

“There’s no silence between the tunes,” he said. “While we’re playing on stage, they’re getting ready in the balcony. The minute we’re done on stage and the curtain drops on my steel band, boom, a group will start playing in the balcony. As soon as they’re done, there might be a group on the side of the stage.”

“It’s constant music for like an hour and 10 minutes,” he said.

The concert is the most popular event on the concert schedule every year, frequently selling out, he said.

The performance will be televised this year, just as it was last year.

This year, a DVD of the concert can be purchased.

The concert is so popular that the School of Music has to exclude musicians to avoid overbooking, Meister said.

“We have so many groups, though, that we can’t let everybody play,” he said. “My steel band [usually] plays every other year – I didn’t think they’d let us play this year.”

Among the performers on the docket this year is the university’s orchestra, although with a personnel change.

“The orchestra will perform and I have gladly passed the baton to my colleague, Dr. Scott Tobias,” Director of Orchestral Activities James A. Anderson said. “He will conduct Leroy Anderson’s ‘Sleigh Ride’ and the

‘Hallelujah Chorus’ from Handel’s Messiah.”

 As the Marching Band Director, Tobias will step off the field and onto the podium Friday.

“The Hayes School of Music is pleased to be able to share the sounds of the season with the Appalachian community,” Tobias said. “Everyone is cordially invited to join us.”

The orchestra will not be the only ensemble performing “Hallelujah Chorus.”

“At the very end of this concert, every single year, they do the Hallelujah Chorus with combined choirs and orchestra – we have gads of choirs here. The men’s glee club, the treble choir, whatever,” Meister said.

The set of pieces being performed includes new arrangements of old favorites.

“[The Steel Band does] a medley that I wrote of ‘Feliz Navidad,’” Meister said, “And then we do ‘Carol of the Bells,’ kind of like Manheim Steamroller, and then we end it with an arrangement of ‘Grandma Got Ran Over by a Reindeer,’ an arrangement I did.”

The concert generates a large amount of public relations, Meister said.

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