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Echoes from the Baltic: Lecture/Recital with the Miami University Latvian Choir

09/06/2012

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Chris Walsh (right) with Latvian composer Eriks Esenvalds

“Echoes from the Baltic,” a lecture and recital with the Miami University Latvian Choir, will be presented by Chris Walsh, senior music education major, at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 13, in 222 Presser Hall. Walsh established and conducts the choir to showcase the choral culture of Latvia.

The choir, comprising 40 Miami students, primarily music majors, will perform four pieces by the Latvian composers Peteris Butans, Eriks Esenvalds and Imants Ramins.

Walsh received a 2012 Undergraduate Summer Scholars award, with mentor Alison Acord, senior lecturer in voice and vocal pedagogy, to study the musical compositions and choral culture of Latvia.

He traveled to Riga, Latvia for three weeks last May. “While there, I observed chorus rehearsals and interviewed prominent composers and conductors with the goal of getting a sense of Latvia's choral culture and its transformation before, during, and after the Soviet Union,” Walsh said.

He became interested in Latvian choral music when he witnessed a performance by Kamer, a prominent Latvian youth choir, at the American Choral Director’s Association National Convention in Chicago in 2011.

“Their performance was outstanding and piqued my interest in Latvian choral music,” he said.

Walsh, a baritone, also participated in the Prague Choral Festival in 2011 singing in a choir of more than 400 students from the U.S., Russia and the Czech Republic. He received a Virginia Pearce Glick Funding Award from the music department for his travel expenses to the Czech Republic.

With his faculty mentor Acord, Walsh also received funding from the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies for a project that includes bringing Anna Margulis to campus this winter. Margulis is a pianist and vocal coach from the Moscow Conservatory and the principal vocal coach at the Moscow Theatre’s “Novaya Opera.”

The “Echoes from the Baltic” recital and lecture are free and open to the public.

Conducting opportunities

Chris Walsh, a music education major from Avon Lake, has had extensive choral conducting opportunities and experience at Miami. He is conductor of the student a capella group the Cheezies, which recently released their first CD. He is a student conductor of the Glee Club, directed by Jeremy Jones. He is also conductor of the new student vocal ensemble, Chapel Voices. He is president of the Miami student chapter of the American Choral Directors Association.

Walsh is the recipient of a 2012
Provost’s Student Academic Achievement Award.

Chris Walsh (photo by Jeff Sabo)