Maybe Lillian Quackenbush, the artistic director of The Palmetto Mastersingers, is an incurable romantic. Or maybe she forgot that Valentine’s Day was back in February. Either way, for the Mastersingers’ spring concert she has assembled a program featuring no less than seven serenades that will cause every love-struck person in the audience to swoon.
Start with “When I Fall In Love.” Then there is The Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody,” and Billy Joel’s “And So It Goes.” From “Les Miserables,” we have “I Dreamed A Dream” and “Bring Him Home.” Also the Latin jazz standard, “Poinciana,” and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ setting of the Rossetti poem, “Silent Noon.”
The concert theme comes from “Amor de mi Alma” (“You Are the Love of My Soul”), Randall Stroope’s arrangement of the de la Vega sonnet. You may not understand the Spanish, but the powerful arrangement conveys the message very well.
No Mastersingers concert is complete without spirituals, and this one includes a healthy dose: “Steal Away,” “Sinner Man,” and Moses Hogan’s “Plenty Good Room” and “Witness.”