Pacific Choirs
University Chorus
Monica Adams, guest conductor
Bell Souza, graduate student conductor
Magdalene Myint, collaborative piano
Casey Kim, percussion
Pacific Singers
Valérie Sainte-Agathe, guest resident conductor
Magdalene Myint, collaborative piano
Friday, April 18, 2025
7:30 pm
Faye Spanos Concert Hall
Voice on the Wind (2018)
1982)
Vanessa Lopez, Lina Huey, Rachel Cross, Isabella Andino, soloists
Casey Kim, percussion
University Chorus Traditional arr. Jeffrey Ames (b. 1969)
Michael Megenney, soloist Casey Kim, percussion
Tara Mack (b. 1972)
Good Morning (2024)
Hye-Young Cho (b. 1969)
Evocation (Mon-Nee-Joh) (2024)
Sarah Quartel (b.
Eric Whitacre (b. 1970)
Sing Gently (2020)
Bell Souza, graduate student conductor
Marques Garrett (b. 1984)
Sing Out My Soul (2020)
Gloria in D Major, RV 589 (ca. 1715)
Gloria in Excelsis Deo
Et in Terra
Propter Magnum Gloria
Tarik O'Regan (b. 1978)
Turn (2016)
Kring (b. 1983)
PROGRAM NOTES
Quartel: Voice on the Wind
Voice on the Wind was commissioned by Gemischter Chor Angusta, Sapporo City Japan and their artistic director Takayuki Fukuda. Sarah Quartel's own inspiring text about the empowerment of singing is set to a catchy melody with imitative scat singing and a driving hand drum accompaniment.
Sarah Quartel is a Canadian composer and educator known for her fresh and exciting approach to choral music, which connects singers, ensembles, and audiences. She is the youngest major choral composer at Oxford University Press and has been commissioned by ensembles worldwide. Quartel's compositions have been performed by children, youth, and adults worldwide, and she regularly partners with ensembles on commissioning projects.
—Oxford University Press
Mack: Good Morning
Good Morning sets the text of a children’s poem in which a child asks the sun where it goes every night. Composer Tara Mack has fond memories of her mother reciting the poem to her as a child, as well as reciting it to her own children. The piece evokes a child’s understanding of and curiosity about the world and hopefully reminds the listener of that moment in our lives when we imagined it was possible to have a conversation with the sun.
Tara Mack has sung in classical choirs for many years and is currently a soprano in the London Oriana Choir. In 2019, inspired by the Oriana’s fiveyear project to promote women composers, she began doing some choral composition of her own.
—Tara Mack
Cho: Evocation (Mon-Nee-Joh)
Cho Hye-Young's choral work, based on Kim Sowol's lyric poem Can't Forget (by Kim Jeong-Sik, pen name: Sowol) delicately expresses separation from and longing for a loved one. Composed in D-flat major, 4/4 time, in throughcomposed form, this piece lyrically captures the anguish of being unable to forget someone who has left. It explores both the pain of persistent memories and the deeper sorrow of watching those memories gradually fade with time. After reaching a passionate climax, the piece delivers the poignant question "How could these thoughts possibly fade?" through an a cappella choir, powerfully conveying the bitter realization that memories might dim.
PROGRAM NOTES
The original poem, written in 1927 during the Japanese colonial period (1910–1945), emerged from one of Korea's darkest historical periods. During this time, when even the Korean language (Hangeul) faced severe restrictions under Japanese rule, Kim Sowol crafted poetry that transformed universal emotions of separation and longing. Cho Hye-Young's modern choral reinterpretation elevates the work to express life's universal truths beyond personal experience. Through their restrained expression of love and separation, memory and forgetting, these two Korean artists created a profound artistic achievement.
Hye-Young Cho is considered one of the leading composers in South Korea. Her works have been performed in almost every choir and commissioned by the most professional choirs in South Korea.
—Michelle Han
Ames: Tshotsholoza
Tshotsholoza began as a song from the Zulu and Ndebele language areas of southern Africa that was sung to help the migrant miners from Rhodesia have hope when dealing with the hardships of working in the gold and diamond mines of South Africa. The song went on to become incredibly popular in South Africa and was often sung as a freedom or solidarity song in the fight against the racism and injustices of apartheid. It has become widely known as South Africa’s unofficial second anthem.
Former South African President Nelson Mandela has described how he sang Tshotsholoza as he worked during his 27-year political imprisonment on Robben Island. He describes it as “a song that compares the apartheid struggle to the motion of an oncoming train” and goes on to explain that “the singing made the work lighter.” In recent decades, it has become common to sing Tshotsholoza at sporting events like rugby or soccer matches to encourage one’s team to keep trying. It is a song of hope and encouragement for dealing with hard times.
Jeffery L. Ames serves as Director of Choral Activities and is a full professor within the School of Music at Belmont University. His prior appointments include Assistant Director of Choral Activities at Baylor University and Choral Director at Edgewater High School and Lincoln High School in Florida.
—Jeffrey Ames
PROGRAM NOTES
Whitacre: Sing Gently
In March of 2020, as the COVID-19 crisis began to unfold around the world, it became clear that this moment in history was going to remembered as one of great suffering for many people, as well as a time of growing division and dissent. It seemed that as the global community began to isolate physically from one another, the same kind of isolation was happening on a social level, that the very fabric of society was tearing at the seams. In that spirit, I wrote the music and words Sing Gently with the hope that it might give some small measure of comfort for those who need it, and that it might suggest a way of living with one another that is compassionate, gentle, and kind. Sing Gently received its premier online on July 19, 2020, performed by the 17,572 voices of Virtual Choir 6.
Grammy Award-winning composer and conductor, Eric Whitacre, is among today’s most popular musicians. His works are programmed worldwide and his ground-breaking Virtual Choirs have united 100,000 singers from more than 145 countries.
—Eric Whitacre
Garrett: Sing Out My Soul
Sing Out My Soul was commissioned by the American Choral Directors Association, Eastern Region for the 2020 Eastern Region Conference in Rochester, New York for the Junior High Honor Choir conducted by Lynnel Joy Jenkins. The opening line of the poem by William Henry Davies calls out to our souls to sing. While there are many things about which we can be happy, these days of heavy social media involvement and constant comparisons to other people require that we remind ourselves that it is not about the outside that matters. The inside—our hearts, minds, and soul—is who we are. Let joy come from deep within, from the assurance that who you are is enough. Because of that, you can sing your song of joy.
Marques Garrett is an avid composer of choral and solo-vocal music whose compositions have been performed to acclaim by high school all-state, collegiate, and professional choirs including Seraphic Fire, the Oakwood University Aeolians, and the National Lutheran Choir. His music is available through more than ten publishers. He has been commissioned by the Cincinnati Youth Choir, Concordia Choir, Harvard University, Mendelssohn Chorus of Philadelphia, and Westminster Choir College.
—Marques
Garrett
Vivaldi: Gloria in D Major
PROGRAM NOTES
Vivaldi composed this Gloria in Venice, probably in 1715, for the choir of the Ospedale della Pietà, an orphanage for girls (or more probably a home, generously endowed by the girls’ ‘anonymous’ fathers, for the illegitimate daughters of Venetian noblemen and their mistresses). The Ospedale prided itself on the quality of its musical education and the excellence of its choir and orchestra.
Vivaldi, a priest, music teacher and virtuoso violinist, composed many sacred works for the Ospedale, where he spent most of his career, as well as hundreds of instrumental concertos to be played by the girls’ orchestra. This, his most famous choral piece, presents the traditional Gloria from the Latin Mass in twelve varied cantata-like sections.
—London Concert Choir
O'Regan: Turn
Commissioned by Conspirare, the first performance of Turn was given on 11 May 2016 at St. Mary’s Catholic Church, Fredericksburg, Texas, conducted by Craig Hella Johnson. The text is taken from the poem Cirkelloop (Cycle) by Albert Verwey.
Tarik Hamilton O'Regan is a London-born composer based in San Francisco. In recent years much of his work has investigated and been influenced by his dual Arab and Irish heritages.
adapted from Tarik O’Regan
Kring: Where Does My Night Go?
Where Does My Night Go is a sweet love song for choir that transcends time and space. It’s written for anyone who loves someone—a romantic lover, a friend, or perhaps even a deployed parent—who is far enough away to be in a very different time zone, and perhaps even a different season.
Katie Kring is a composer, writer-of musicals, conductor, and professor based in Springfield, Missouri. Kring is a prolific composer, drawing influences from rock, jazz, pop, and musical theatre idioms, and a large body of choral and musical theatre work.
—Katie Kring
Quartel: Voice on the Wind
I heard a voice on the summer wind, hoo wah hoo wah hoo
Who she is I can’t explain. Hoo wah hoo wah hoo
I heard a voice on the summer wind, hoo wah hoo wah hoo
Blowing free and blowing wild. Hoo wah hoo wah hoo
I heard a voice on the summer wind, hoo wah hoo wah hoo
Strength and spirit in her song. hoo wah hoo wah hoo wah hoo
I heard a voice on the summer wind, hoo wah hoo wah hoo
With a song I seem to know. Hoo wah hoo wah hoo wah hoo
I heard a voice on the summer wind, hoo wah hoo wah hoo wah
Sounds familiar like my own. hoo wah hoo wah hoo wah hoo
Moves me like she knows me well.
I heard a voice on the summer wind, sounds familiar like my own. I am the voice of the summer wind, hoo wah hoo wah hoo
Strong and sure where e’er I stand. Hoo wah hoo wah hoo wah hoo.
—Sarah Quartel
Mack: Good Morning
Good morning, Merry Sunshine! How do you wake so soon?
You scared away the little stars And shined away the moon. I saw you go to sleep las night, Before I ceased my playing. How did you get way over here And where have you been staying?
I never go to sleep, my dear, I just go round to see
The little children of the East Who rise and watch for me. I waken all the birds and trees And flowers on my way
And last of all, the little child, Who stayed out late to play.
—American nursery rhyme
Cho: Evocation (Mon-Nee-Joh)
Unable to forget, you will miss them. Let it be, that will be a life all it’s own. There will come a day when you forget.
Unable to forget, you will miss them. So be it, just let the years pass on by. You will one day forget some, if not all.
Yet, for all that, is it not also true, With blood and bones yearning alike, How can thought ever leave you.
Ames: Tshotsholoza
Tshotsholoza
Kulezo ntaba
Stimela siphume South Africa
Wen' uyabaleka
Kulezo ntaba
Stimela siphume South Africa
Go, keep moving
Go on and board the train
From the mountain down in South Africa
Keep moving, run away
Go on and board the train
From the mountain down in South Africa.
—Sowol Kim
—Traditional South African anthem
Whitacre: Sing Gently
May we sing together, Always,
May our voice be soft, May our singing be music for others, And may it keep others aloft. Sing gently, always, Sing gently as one.
May we stand together, Always,
May our voice be strong, May we hear the singing, always, And may we always sing along. Sing gently, always, Sing gently as one.
Garrett: Sing Out My Soul
Sing out, my soul, your songs of joy; Sing as a happy bird will sing Beneath a rainbow’s lovely arch In early spring. Think not of death… Strive not for gold… Train up your mind to feel content, What matters then how low your store? What we enjoy, and not possess, Makes rich or poor.
—Eric Whitacre
Vivaldi: Gloria in D Major Gloria in excelsis Deo. Et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis. Gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam. — from the Ordinary of the Latin Mass
—William Henry Davies
Vivaldi: Gloria in D Major Glory to God on high And on earth peace, good will toward men. We give thanks to thee for thy great glory.
—trans. Boston Baroque
O'Regan: Turn
I am a spark with goal, without direction, Thrown into the universe as my journey began, Before long another sun bound itself to me And turning I lived for an unmeasured while,
A kernel of life, empty in itself, Full of the energy that around me spun. O that I could without the knowing for centuries Turn within the ungrasped radiating rose.
Endless world, incomplete universe
And without beginning, but where each part Image is of the whole and a lightshow
Along the eternal ways, tell me, shall once, shall Ever there be an end to your steady fire, You, a diamond in the hollow of a hand?
—Albert Verwey, trans. Cliff Crego
Kring: Where Does My Night Go?
Where does my night go
When it flies laden
With longing and dreams
Does it fall on your bed?
And when the day comes with warmth and with sweetness
Is it ’cause you walked in it hours ahead?
Yours is the summer and mine is the winter
Yours is the autumn and mine is the spring
And the moon shines down over the both of us
Giving her blessing
How many miles lie stretching between us
How to far to walk or to swim or to fly
We measure in tears and in joys that can flit cross
The silence and distance as broad as the sky
Mine is the summer and yours is the winter
Mine is the autumn and yours is the spring
And the moon sees our love for each other
And shines down her blessing
Somewhere in time and Somewhere in space there is somewhere a place
That I will be with you
Somehow someway sometime someplace
I will be with you and you will be with me again
Yours is the summer and mine is the winter
Yours is the autumn and mine is the spring
And the moon shines her love over the both of us
Giving her blessing.
—Katie Kring
Monica Adams has worked as a collaborative pianist at University of the Pacific since 1995. She currently serves as assistant professor of practice and directs the University Chorus.
Adams holds a bachelor’s degree in music performance, voice, from University of the Pacific. She studied piano with Frank Wiens; voice with William Whitesides, George Buckbee, and John DeHaan; and conducting with William Dehning and Robert Halseth.
Adams has performed as a pianist with the Stockton Symphony Orchestra and sang the roles of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro, Old Maid in Old Maid and the Thief, and has served as Musical Director and conductor at Pacific for Pajama Game (Fallon House), Paint Your Wagon (Fallon House), You're a Good Man Charlie Brown, Apple Tree, Falsettoland, Assassins, and 1940's Radio Hour. Adams has also musicdirected Oliver, La Cage aux Folles, Babes in Arms, Footloose (conducted, also), Beauty and the Beast (Santa Rosa Repertory Theater), The Full Monty (Santa Rosa Repertory Theater) and Godspell for various theatres. In 2004 Adams participated in the summer SongFest program, which included coachings with Martin Katz, Graham Johnson, D'Anna Fortunato, John Hall, Judith Kellock and John Harbison, and performing in multiple recitals.
Valérie Sainte-Agathe is a guest conductor at University of the Pacific in 2024-25. She has conducted the San Francisco Girls Chorus (SFGC) since 2013, including performances with renowned ensembles throughout the United States and beyond. Through transformative choral music training, education, and performance, SainteAgathe empowers young women and champions the music of today throughout the choral world.
At the SFGC, Sainte-Agathe welcomes collaborators including the San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Symphony, Grammy Award-winning vocal ensemble Chanticleer, Opera Parallele, and folk sensation Aoife O’Donovan. She joined Philharmonia Baroque as their chorale director in 2022 and was featured in the 2022 book Music Mavens: 15 Women of Note published by the Chicago Review Press.
Further highlights of her illustrious career include her Carnegie Hall and Barbican Center debuts with the Philip Glass Ensemble, conducting the SFGC for the New York Philharmonic Biennial Festival at Lincoln Center, and collaborating with The Knights for the SHIFT Festival at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. She has made two recordings as the SFGC’s Music Director, Final Answer (2018) and My Outstretched Hand (2019). SainteAgathe served as Music Director for the Young Singers program of the Montpellier National Symphony and Opera in France from 1998 to 2011 and participated in eight recordings with the Montpellier National Orchestra and the Radio France Festival.
Bell Souza is in her fifth year at University of the Pacific. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in music education in May 2024 and is now pursuing her master’s in music education through the oneyear graduate assistantship program. Her primary instrument is voice, and she has studied under Daniel Ebbers for the past four years. Sauza has served as music director of many groups including the Unitarian Universalist Stockton choir and Sigma Alpha Iota—Eta Omega chapter. She was an assistant stage manager for Pacific Opera Theatre’s production of The Threepenny Opera (2022) and a stage manager for their productions of Alcina (2024) and Carousel (2025).
Magdalene Myint is a music performance major studying piano with Sonia Leong and collaborative piano with Patricia Grimm at University of the Pacific. She currently serves as the pianist for Pacific Singers and University Chorus, the president of Pacific Repertoire Orchestra (a student-run chamber orchestra), a teacher at Pacific Community Music School and throughout the greater Stockton and Central Valley communities. A winner of the 2024-25 Conservatory Performance Competition, Myint will perform the first movement of Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto with Pacific Orchestras in April 2025. Upon graduation, she will pursue a master’s degree in piano performance.
University Chorus
The ensemble is large, mixed chorus that performs both a cappella and choral-orchestral works in a wide variety of genres, often collaborating with other ensembles at Pacific.
Sopranos
Isabella Andino
Katie Carlos
Rachel Cross
Lina Huey
Alizon Lopez
Vanessa Lopez
Rebecca Mahon
Raquel Reginato
Olivhea Ross
Altos
Evelyn Aburto
Jade Anderson
Huey Chan
Mackenzie Deems
Natalae Gong
Jingling Li
Grace Liaw
Arianna Pereyra
Sylvia Valverde
Pacific Singers
Tenors
Patrick Bartholomy
Davis Robinson
Michael Shove
Basses
Victor Alcaraz
Mitchell Amos
Connor Hsu
Seth Morris
Wesley Shafer
Jason Wu
The ensemble is a select, mixed-voice chamber choir who collaborate with the University Chorus for two choral concerts each semester and perform at major university events and ceremonies. They also work with the University Symphony Orchestra and the Stockton Symphony to perform major choral and orchestral pieces.
Sopranos
Magdalena Bowen
Maya Chung
Rose Krueger
Michelle Miracle
Ria Patel
Katie Pelletier
Charlize Price
Shannon Shepherd
Bell Souza
Altos
Miranda Duarte
Jordan Hendrickson
Mia Janosik
Zoie Macapanpan
Stella Mahnke
Elizabeth Neumeyer
Tenors
Leo Hearl
Leo Hogan
Michael Megenney
Ian Orejana
Matthew Young
Basses
Daniel Campbell
Jordan Reece Guitang
Landon Horstman
Ernesto Pena
Pacific Voice and Choral Faculty
Daniel Ebbers, program director
Eric Dudley
James Haffner
Heidi Moss Erickson
Monica Adams
Valérie Sainte-Agathe
Jonathan Latta, program director of ensembles
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