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A Letter from
Kevin...
August, 2007
To the membership of the Delaware Choral Society,
I would like to take a moment to introduce myself to all of
you since some of you may not have been in attendance on the evening of my
audition to be your new music director.
My name is Kevin Ward Thomas.
I was born in Crisfield, Maryland,
and lived there for the very first part of my life.
My family soon moved to Ramstein,
Germany, since my stepfather
was in the United States
Air force. After about four years
in Germany and a few more in the
Washington,
DC, area we returned to the eastern shore of Maryland, where I attended middle and high school in Dorchester County.
My love for music, in particular singing and choral singing, began at an
early age in the years we were in Germany and continued when we moved
back to the States.
My passion grew so much so that I decided to major in music
at West Chester
University
in Pennsylvania.
I then completed my degree at the College of Charleston
in South Carolina.
I have also studied in summer workshops at Oberlin College
and Conservatory in Ohio and began master
studies in conducting at
University
of South Carolina.
I am currently living in Easton,
Maryland, very close to my childhood home, and
I am Music Director at St. Luke’s United
Methodist
Church
in St. Michaels, Maryland.
I also serve as the Music Director of a small chamber choir in Easton called Bach to the
Future, in addition to my work as a private vocal instructor.
Well, enough about me and on to something much more
important and interesting. What is
that you might ask? Well, that
would be what it is I hope we will accomplish together this next season in the
Delaware Choral Society. What I
would like to bring to the plate as your new music director is my love and
passion of music and programming. I
think the plans that I have proposed to the board of directors, and which have
been approved, will be exciting for us as a group to sing but also be inspiring
for our audiences.
For our first concert together I have chosen to do a very
traditional format of a time- honored tradition across Europe and the United States.
We will perform a Christmas concert entitled “Christmas Fanfares and
Carols.” Our fanfares will come
into play with the accompaniment that I have chosen.
We will be performing several selections with organ and brass.
To add variety we will also do some pieces with piano and flute as well
as several selections a cappella.
Throughout the program, there will be selections in which we will invite the
audience to participate to add a new dimension to our concert and truly bring
them into our celebration with very traditional carols.
As a highlight of our concert we will perform Daniel Pinkham’s
Christmas Cantata.
I have chosen this work for two reasons.
First, it fits with our organ and brass theme, but most importantly
because Daniel Pinkham, is a very important figure in choral music in the United States, passed past away last
December.
For our spring concert I have chosen a very inspiring work
entitled “Holocaust Cantata! Songs from the Camps” by Donald McCullough.
This work is a celebration of writings and music that came out of the
concentration camps of Nazi-controlled Europe. The
work shows how music and literature were important in the survival of many in
the camps. I will pair with this
work other works that have come out of other human struggles, such as the
spirituals of slavery in the US
and music from the apartheid movement in
South Africa.
It is my hope that the concert will truly be a celebration of human
struggle and the important role music can have on the survival of the individual
through such struggles.
I invite all of you to please join us as we begin the 51st
season of the Delaware Choral Society.
I look forward to meeting and working with each of you.
It is my sincere hope that we will continue to bring beautiful choral
music and inspirational programming to central Delaware for many years
to come.
Kevin W. Thomas
Music Director,
Delaware
Choral Society
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The Delaware Choral
Society
P. O. Box 336
Dover, DE 19903
info@delawarechoralsociety.org
www.delawarechoralsociety.org
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