Great Hall Choral Arts Festival - "Engage, Enrich, Expand"
| Date |
Thursday, April 20, 2023
7:30 p.m. |
| Featuring | Area high school choirs, Bethel Choir, and Composer and Conductor Saunder Choi |
| Location | Benson Great Hall - View maps and directions |
| Instructions for Guests | Park in the West Lot. |
| Cost | Adults $10; Groups (10+) $7; Students (K-12) free, no ticket required; BU Employee & BU Student free with ID at the door. |
| Ticketing | Purchase tickets online at tickets.bethel.edu or call the Ticket Office at 651.638.6333. Buy Tickets |
Event Description
Bethel's Annual Great Hall Choral Arts Festival welcomes Saunder Choi as guest conductor and clinician. The festival will culminate in an evening concert with individual performances by area high school choirs and Bethel Choir directed by Dr. Merrin Guice Gill, featuring a joint work by Saunder Choi.
Participating in this year's festival are choirs from Avail Academy, Legacy Christian Academy, Maranatha Christian Academy, Minnehaha Academy, and United Christian Academy.
Saunder Choi is a Los Angeles-based Filipino composer and choral artist. His works have also been performed by the Philippine Madrigal Singers, the Crossing Choir, the LA Master Chorale Chamber Singers, Sacra Profana, Tonality, Indianapolis Symphonic Choir, World Youth Choir, Asia Pacific Youth Choir and many others. He won the 2017 Indianapolis Symphonic Choir Carol Commission competition and awarded the 1st prize in the 2014 American Prize for Choral Composition (student division). He was also a finalist for the 2012 and 2015 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award and was one of the five composition fellows at the 2016 Big Sky Choral Initiative, where he worked with the Grammy-award winning choir, The Crossing.
As a tenor, he maintains an active singing schedule in Southern California. He regularly sings with the L.A. Choral Lab, Pacific Chorale, Horizon Chamber Choir, C3LA: Contemporary Choral Collective of Los Angeles, the Hex Ensemble and Tonality. He serves as teaching artist for the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s Voices Within and Oratorio Project. As a SAG-AFTRA session singer, he sang in the soundtrack of Disney’s The Lion King (2019) live action remake, Disney’s Mulan (2020) live action remake, The Call of the Wild (2020), and others. He is currently Director of Music at Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica.
Born in Manila, Philippines, Saunder holds degrees from De La Salle University – Manila, Berklee College of Music, and the USC Thornton School of Music.
Choi's full bio can be found on his website.
Questions?
Contact the Bethel Ticket Office at 651.638.6333 or box-office@bethel.edu.