Jacob Branson<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Harding University will host Dec. 5 Emmet Cahill and the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra as part of the Arts and Life Performance Series. The director of this program and Chair of the Department of Music, Jay Walls, says \u201cit\u2019s going to be the largest Christmas concert that we\u2019ve ever had at Harding.\u201d Cahill is a member of Celtic Thunder, an Irish music group, who has just completed a 50-concert tour. \u201cHe\u2019ll be singing with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra and also with our Grand Chorus,\u201d Walls said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This will mark Cahill\u2019s second time performing on Harding\u2019s campus.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe performed for us last December and it was very well received,\u201d Walls said. \u201cpeople were raving about it for months afterward.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The goal of the Arts and Life Performance series is to bring global performances into the Harding community. \u201cI think sometimes students get the feeling that they have to go to Little Rock or Memphis to see somebody of value,\u201d Walls said. \u201cThey don\u2019t realize that we bring some big-name people into Searcy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cahill will be joined by the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, which is currently the #1 orchestra in the state. They performed on campus last spring for the \u201cMusic of the Spheres\u201d concert. This combined performance is possible thanks to local sponsors like the White County Citizen and Centennial Bank.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWithout the help that Centennial Bank gives us we wouldn\u2019t be able to bring the Arkansas Symphony in or big names like Emmet Cahill,\u201d Walls said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alongside these two guests will be Harding\u2019s Grand Chorus, a combination of the Harding Chorus, directed by Kyle Pullen, and the Concert Choir, directed by Stacey Neely.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Grand Chorus will be singing five numbers and consists of around 107 students,\u201d Pullen said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He says the two groups have been working on their pieces for about a month, and that while \u201cmost of the time we do different repertoire, for this concert we\u2019re combining.\u201d Among these pieces is one in Scottish, for which Pullen says they prepared by having been \u201cgiven a phonetic way of speaking the words.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If those three participants weren\u2019t enough, the Harding Orchestra is also lending some of its players to the performance.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Emily Palmer, a senior Cellist who has been playing with Harding for four years said, \u201cwe\u2019ve had the music for a while and been working on it on our own, but we\u2019ll be starting group rehearsals this week.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Harding\u2019s instrumentalist section will consist of about 15 players all of whom \u201cwere selected to perform in the concert, for the most part, it\u2019s the first 2 or 3 chairs of each section,\u201d Palmer said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Walls said the Benson will be heavily decorated for the event, with Pullen expressing that \u201cit will be a beautiful scene and beautiful music.\u201dThe concert will be at 7:30 PM on December 5th<\/sup> in the Benson Auditorium. Tickets are available now at hardingtickets.com for $20 with a half-price option for students. Including intermission, The show will last for roughly an hour and a half and will consist of pieces such as \u201cDanny Boy,\u201d \u201cO Holy Night,\u201d \u201cAngels We Have Heard on High,\u201d \u201cMary Did You Know\u201d and a suite from The Polar Express<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jacob Branson Harding University will host Dec. 5 Emmet Cahill and the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra as part of the Arts and Life Performance Series. The director of this program and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15086,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20098"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20107,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20098\/revisions\/20107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}