Choir trav­els to Michi­gan and plans for more trips

The Bethel Col­lege Con­cert Choir re­cently trav­eled six hours away from Bethel’s cam­pus for a re­treat. The choir trav­eled to Elk­ton and Low­ell, Michi­gan where they per­formed for two Mis­sion­ary churches Nov. 7 and 8.

Con­cert Choir di­rec­tor Bob Ham was pleased with the week­end re­treat.

“It was a won­der­ful ex­pe­ri­ence in terms of mu­si­cian­ship, re­la­tion­ships and pub­lic min­istry,” said Ham.

Au­di­ences of the choir will no­tice some­thing dif­fer­ent about the choir from last year. And that is the num­ber and types of voices. Most choirs are made up mostly of women. Ham be­lieved they were go­ing to lose ten of his male vo­cal­ists and be­gan to pray for fif­teen new men to join. He ended up los­ing fif­teen, but was blessed with eigh­teen new male faces.

“I’ve never had that many men au­di­tion for choir, let alone join,” Ham said.

Hav­ing that num­ber of men helps bal­ance out the sound of the women. The so­pra­nos and al­tos are tal­ented this year and the new men will sing with more con­fi­dence, depth and ma­tu­rity of tone. The fresh­men also have made a huge con­tri­bu­tion to the choir. Ham is look­ing for­ward to work­ing with them in the com­ing years.

Ham has been di­rect­ing the Con­cert Choir and the A cap­pella vo­cal group Voices of Tri­umph for many years. He said he en­joys many as­pects of his oc­cu­pa­tion, es­pe­cially teach­ing stu­dents great choral lit­er­a­ture, and to glo­rify God with that mu­sic.

“If I am able to do so,” he said. “I love to teach about per­form­ing with ex­cel­lence....do­ing the best they can do, with grace in their hearts, unto the Lord,”

The choir is a group of stu­dents who sing to the Lord.

“As a group I’d love to see the choir grow deeper in their faith through the mu­sic we sing,” Ham said.

His goals are to teach the stu­dents to be bet­ter vo­cal­ists, help­ing them learn to sight-read and per­form. Ham also wants to in­tro­duce them to dif­fer­ent eras and styles of mu­sic.

The next big pro­ject for the choral de­part­ment is the Christ­mas con­cert which will be held Fri­day, Dec. 4 at 7:30 p.m. and Sat­ur­day Dec. 5 at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. in the Ever­est-Rohrer Chapel/​Fine Arts Cen­ter. The theme this year is “The Whole World Re­joices” and will fea­ture mu­sic in a va­ri­ety of lan­guages and will in­cor­po­rate scrip­ture read­ings in dif­fer­ent lan­guages by in­ter­na­tional Bethel stu­dents and fac­ulty.

Some of the pieces that will be fea­tured are sung in Span­ish, He­brew and Ger­man, ac­com­pa­nied by a va­ri­ety of other songs.

Trips next se­mes­ter will in­clude con­certs at Wood­burn Mis­sion­ary Church, Bren­ne­man Memo­r­ial Mis­sion­ary Church and at the First Pres­by­ter­ian Church in New Carlisle. In ad­di­tion, the an­nual choir tour trip will be to Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon in the first week of May.

The choir is ac­com­pa­nied by Dr. Rob Rhein, who has also writ­ten a piece with which the win­ter pro­gram will be opened.