Valparaiso University’s Kantorei choir will introduce audiences to religious music from throughout the world during a tour of the southeastern United States in February and March.

The Kantorei will lead services of choral evening prayer, singing music from several countries, including works from Cameroon, Argentina and the Philippines.  The choir will also sing traditional music of the western church, including works by Heinrich Schutz, Johannes Brahms and Aaron Copland.

The tour begins Feb. 27 and will include concerts in Tucker and Savannah, Ga.; Hilton Head Island, S.C.; and Chapel Hill and Charlotte, N.C.

The Kantorei is a select religious choir of 31 voices that serves as the choir of the Chapel of the Resurrection on campus, specializes in festive liturgies, and sings a diverse repertoire of sacred music from chant to Bach to music in folk and jazz idioms. For several years, the Kantorei has regularly presented training and education events featuring new liturgical settings and hymns to Lutheran audiences across the country.

Lorraine Brugh, Kruse organ fellow at the University and director of the Kantorei, said the Kantorei tour is an opportunity for the choir to serve as leaders in the larger church by welcoming people into lively and dynamic worship.

“By taking a choral evening prayer service to various congregations, the Kantorei can teach new hymns and songs, while introducing the congregation to a well-loved worship form,” Dr. Brugh said. “In their role on campus, the Kantorei often leads and introduces new liturgy and hymns, and a tour allows them to teach the church’s new music to new audiences.”     

In 2008, the choir released its most recent album, “We See Light,” which features hymns from new Lutheran worship books that draw upon the church’s northern European roots as well as African, Asian and other music traditions. “We See Light” is available from Valpo ArtsMedia (http://www.valpoarts.com) and is the choir’s second album.  It complements the 2003 recording “In Thy Light,” which featured an array of traditional and multicultural hymns. In 2006, the Kantorei also recorded 10 hymns that were featured on a CD sent to thousands of Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod churches across the country to introduce congregations to new music in the “Lutheran Service Book.”

Brugh has been involved in the development of Lutheran music and worship practices for many years and serves as executive director of Valpo’s Institute for Liturgical Studies (http://www.valpo.edu/ils), which annually brings hundreds of church leaders across the country together to study and reflect upon worship practices.

--For The Times