St. Barnabas' Adult Choir

Affectionately described by our former Rector as "pound for pound, the best choir in the diocese," the St. Barnabas' Adult Choir leads the musical portions of the liturgy at the later, 10:45 a.m., Sunday services and at many special services throughout the program year. Currently consisting of fifteen to twenty amateur singers from a variety of backgrounds, the choir rehearses every Sunday at 9:00 a.m. The choir is not an audition group, though musical standards are fairly high. Some musical experience is a plus, but new singers will find the rehearsals a great learning experience. We have fun in those rehearsals, too, but are serious about the role we play in St. Barnabas' Parish's worship life.

Leah Milton and members of the St. Barnabas' Adult Choir   [Photo: Jim Birr]

The musical style of the choir is eclectic, with music to suit a broad range of tastes from classical works to serious contemporary works, with the occasional rock or gospel work thrown in to provide variety. We usually sing with organ or piano accompaniment, with occasional a capella singing, and brass or other instruments for the very special occasion.

The choir is quite fortunate to have talented professional musicians leading it. Leah Milton, our choir director, is a music educator with a degree from Southern Illinois University who directs choirs in the Collinsville School District. Cindy Vantine, our accompanist, is an accomplished musician with many years of experience teaching, leading and accompanying choruses in Minnesota, North Dakota and Iowa before coming to St. Barnabas' in 1982. Both Leah and Cindy also perform with local community and touring professional choruses.

Parishioners wishing to "make a joyful noise" with the choir simply need to contact Leah or Cindy to express their interest in joining and show up for Sunday rehearsals.

Schedule

This is the proposed fall performance schedule. As you are aware, pieces and dates are always subject to change, though every effort will be made to follow this.

If you are unable to be at a rehearsal and service, please contact Leah to let her know. If you wish, you may email her at lmilton@kahoks.org.

You may download rehearsal music from the links that follow this schedule.

Rehearsal Music

Choir members may download rehearsal recordings of most of the current repertoire, produced by Dave Palmer. These are .mp3 files that may be played in your browser, or downloaded and then copied to iPods or other .mp3 players, or burned to an audio CD for playback in CD players. They are fairly compressed, but are still large files between 1 MB and 2 MB each and will take a while to download on slower connections.

Instructions:

To play in the browser, CLICK on the desired vocal part after the title. The file will download to a temporary location and play in your default media player.

• If you have a PC, then RIGHT CLICK on the desired file and choose SAVE TARGET AS... to save it to your hard drive.
• If you have a Mac, then hold down the CONTROL KEY and then CLICK on the desired file and save it to your hard drive