On Sunday, Feb. 5 at 4 p.m., the Goshen College men’s chorus will host the first-ever Men’s Choral Festival Concert in Sauder Concert Hall. Scott Hochstetler, associate professor of music, spearheaded the event, inviting local men’s choirs to be involved as well. Along with GC’s choir, the concert will feature the Goshen High School Crimson Men’s Choir, the Northridge High School Varsity Lights and The Open Fifths, a local men’s a capella group. This is the first time Goshen College has had a men’s choir-specific concert. Hochstetler notes that in the past, GC has hosted a concert “called the Venus...

By Sadie Gustafson-Zook • February 2, 2017 • Arts

A man strides to the center of the dark stage, confident in his shiny gray suit. He sings, “I’m not promising the moon/I’m not promising a rainbow/Just a practical solution/To a solitary life…” A man in a vest and tie appears next to the first and echoes the singer’s sentiment without words, the plaintive cry of his saxophone filling the room. These two musicians will soon grace the stage of Sauder Hall. Vocalist Kurt Elling and saxophonist Branford Marsalis are touring in support of their Grammy-nominated jazz collaboration Upward Spiral. Marsalis and Elling will joined by the other three members...

By Andrew Pauls • January 26, 2017 • Arts

It is tradition at Goshen College that the first weekend of December, when students are just starting to go crazy from post-Thanksgiving, pre-finals stress, A Festival of Carols comes along, filling the time and hearts of many. A truly collaborative event, Festival of Carols involves almost all of GC’s major music ensembles: Women’s World Music Choir, Men’s Choir, Chamber choir, Symphonic Orchestra, All-Campus Band, a brass ensemble, as well as the community children’s choir, Shout For Joy. An event that spans over 5 days and logs a combined 1000 hours in preparation, production and post-production (not including unpaid ensemble members),...

By Sadie Gustafson-Zook • December 1, 2016 • Arts

On Oct. 29, five Goshen College vocalists had the opportunity to compete in the annual competition sponsored by the Indiana chapter of the National Association of Teachers Singing (NATS). The event, which took place at Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW), featured students from Ball State, Anderson University, Taylor University and IPFW. Representatives of GC included Lukas Thompson and Ben Meyer Reimer, sophomores, Jacob Zehr, a junior, and Galed Krisjayanta and Aaron Graber, seniors. Four of the five received awards for their performances. Scott Hochstetler, professor of music and teacher for all of these vocalists, expressed satisfaction with the...

By Katie Yoder • November 17, 2016 • Arts

This Sunday, November 13, Goshen College will be presenting a concert to raise money for the LGBTQIA Student Leader Scholarship. Stephanie Hollenberg, a soprano and GC graduate, will be performing with accompaniment from Christine Seitz on piano. The LGBTQIA Student Leader Scholarship was established in October 2015 by GC graduate Pax Ressler. The scholarship was established to empower the leadership of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual students at GC. “This scholarship was created as a means of providing material resources to LGBTQIA students, recognizing that the July 2015 change to Goshen’s hiring policy would not be enough...

By Elsa Lantz • November 10, 2016 • Arts

Walking into Ignition Music Garage is like stepping back – before digital files, before CD’s and even before cassettes – to a time when vinyl records provided the introduction to musicians like Led Zeppelin, The Beatles and AC/DC. When shopping at Ignition, customers find a number of used vinyl records ranging in genre from 80’s hair bands to smooth jazz. Customers can expect to pay anywhere from $2 for an old beat-up record to $120 for a new boxed set of the Rolling Stones’ entire music career. Along with used vinyl, Ignition carries select recent recordings from famous bands and...

By Spencer Buttermore • November 10, 2016 • Features

This Saturday, Nov. 5, the Goshen College orchestra and combined choirs will be performing Larry Nickel’s “Requiem for Peace.” The Requiem was discovered by Scott Hochstetler, assistant professor of music, and Debra Brubaker, professor of music, about seven years ago at a symposium of Mennonite musicians. It is a work that honors the suffering civilians of this world who have been caught in the crossfire of war. In addition to the Requiem, the orchestra will perform Dvorak’s “New World Symphony.” “We were very attracted to the subject matter because of historic peace witness at Goshen College,” said Hochstetler, “and also...

By Elsa Lantz • November 3, 2016 • Arts

VOCES8 started off their Goshen debut with Henry Purcell’s “I Was Glad” and ended with “I Don’t Mean a Thing” by Duke Ellington arr. Ben Parry, immediately following an enthusiastic standing ovation. VOCES8 [pronounced “voaches eight”] is a British music ensemble, formed in 2005. The group is made up of eight vocalists. They have recently welcomed into the group a tenor, Blake Morgan, who is the first American in VOCES8. Morgan is from Detroit, while the remaining seven members are from the United Kingdom. The group tours annually through Europe, Asia and North America in well-known venues like Cite de...

By Emily Stoltzfus • November 3, 2016 • Arts

“Do you all [The Record] still do Inside Outside Voices?” someone asked in the hazy green room under Ignition Garage. “I loved that – we called in all the time. I hope the Record is still that good.” Kansas Bible Company is a seven-person band that started at Goshen College, back in the days when they still prank-called the Record funnies phone line. Their big-band sound has captured a large following, with their new album out on Spotify and making the “America Viral Top 50” playlist. On Monday, Oct. 31, the band came back to Goshen to play at Ignition...

By Hayley Mann • November 3, 2016 • Features

The Goshen College Chamber Choir performed Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil along with the St. Joseph Valley Camerata and special guest, Glenn Miller in Sauder Concert Hall on Friday, Oct. 14. Both the Chamber Choir and Camerata, a local professional group, were conducted by Scott Hochstetler, associate professor of music. The groups had rehearsed both separately and together over the course of the last few months. Hochstetler described the experience of preparing for and performing the concert as a little different than most. The work is both technically challenging and lengthy but the participation of both choirs made it more feasible. Hochstetler...

By Katie Yoder • October 27, 2016 • Arts

During fall break, Parables, Goshen College’s student worship ensemble, visited New York City, as well as New Jersey and Ohio. In their possession, the eight students didn’t have much more than a djembe, tone chimes and their personal items when they arrived. However, when they left they were $5 richer, had memories of inspirational performances and had created a strong bond with each other. The students, seniors Sadie Gustafson-Zook and Galed Praxista Krisjayanta, junior Caleb Liechty, and sophomores Naomi Peters, Emily Stoltzfus, Josh Liechty, Anne Buckwalter and Lukas Thompson, along with Dan Koop Liechty, director of alumni and career networks,...

By Abby King • October 27, 2016 • Arts

On Sunday, Goshen College welcomed the Ulysses Quartet to campus to play as a part of the Rieth Chamber Series. This concert was the second in the line-up. The quartet has members from Prince Edward Island, California, Pennsylvania and Taiwan. It was formed in the summer of 2015. By 2016, they were the String Division Gold Medalists and Grand Prize Winners of the Fischoff Competition at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend. “We are quite lucky to have the Fischoff competition occur so close to Goshen, and to get the winning performers to come give a recital every...

By Elsa Lantz • October 13, 2016 • Arts

Carrie Newcomer smiled and picked up her guitar as the welcoming applause faded. She plucked a few notes and began to play: “I believe there are some debts that we never can repay/I believe there are some words that you can never unsay/And I don’t know a single soul/Who didn’t get lost along the way.” The low, sweet alto voice woven through piano and guitar brought the poetry to life, as if someone had married James Taylor’s music to Mary Oliver’s poetry and mysticism. She sang about the details of life: about ginger tea, jelly jars, and wool gloves, but...

By Andrew Pauls • September 22, 2016 • Arts

Where the leafy Maple grows….. You know the rest. At least, you think you do. Or maybe at least the chorus. Still, it’s a pretty good guess that you were not aware of the changes to the Goshen College Alma Mater that happened two years ago. President Brenneman and the Alumni board voted on changes, made with the help of the Music Department, to update the language of our college theme song to better reflect GC values and current vernacular. “These are small changes that we thought honored the legacy of the Alma Mater but also made some relevant updates,”...

By Hayley Mann • September 15, 2016 • Features

The 2016-17 Goshen College Performing Arts Series will once again bring outstanding performers from around the world to the stage of the Music Center’s Sauder Hall. This year’s line-up is a diverse and international group of new and returning artists from many different countries, including Argentina, England, Ireland, South Africa, Norway, and Ukraine, as well as many brilliant musicians from the United States. Over the coming year, 10 groups of musicians will come to perform in Sauder Hall, bringing with them the excitement of multiple genres of music, song, and dance. With performances ranging from classical to jazz, (even mbube,...

By Jonah Yoder • September 8, 2016 • Arts