JEFFERSON — More than 200 singers in five community choirs from throughout northern Ohio will gather Feb. 28 at the new Jefferson Area Senior High School auditorium to participate in the 2010 North Coast Community Choir Festival.
The event is being hosted by the Ashtabula County Choral Music Society and supported in part by grants from the Ohio Choral Directors Association and the Ohio Arts Council.
The choirs will rehearse together to present a free public concert at 4 pm. Each ensemble will share a few selections from its performance repertoire and following the intermission the choirs will join to perform selections from Mendelssohn’s “Elijah” with the orchestra conducted by John Drotleff.
Festival participants will include: Lakeland Civic Chorus (Mentor) directed by Chris Robinson; Madison Chorale directed by Betty Jean Green; Wade Raridon Singers (Youngstown) directed by Wade Raridon; West Shore Chorale (Lakewood) directed by John Drotleff; and host Ashtabula County Choral Music Society Chorale, directed by Kathleen Milford.
Community choirs are composed of volunteer singers who simply love to sing and regularly rehearse together and perform choral literature for audiences in their communities.
“Elijah” by Felix Mendelssohn is an oratorio that tells the Biblical story of the Old Testament prophet Elijah with dramatic music for choir, soloists, and orchestra. The North Coast Festival Concert will feature the overture and seven choruses including: “Help, Lord,” “Lord, bow thine ear,” “Yet doth the Lord,” “Lift Thine Eyes,” “He Watching Over Israel,” “Thanks be to God” and “And Then Shall Your Light Break Forth.”
Conductor John Drotleff has directed choirs in northeastern Ohio since 1961 in middle and high schools in Boardman, Lakewood and Avon Lake, at Hiram College and several church and community settings in the Youngstown and Cleveland areas. He has served as guest conductor and clinician throughout the region. A graduate of Dana School of Music and Columbia University, he is a past president of the Ohio Choral Directors Association and has received that organization’s Distinguished Service Award.
