October 13, 2023 – The winter holidays will get an early start when the Santa Fe Singers, with special guests the Gainesville Youth Chorus, perform “Songs of the Season” Friday, Nov. 17, 2023 at 7:30 p.m. in the Jackson N. Sasser Fine Arts Hall at the Northwest Campus of Santa Fe College (SF), 3000 NW 83 Street, Gainesville.
Tickets are $15 for adults; $9 for seniors, students, military service members and children 12 and under; and free for SF students, faculty, and staff with college ID cards. Tickets are available from the Fine Arts Hall box office at 352-395-4181 or online from Showpass at: showpass.com/songs-of-the-season-2.
The winter holidays include Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and more. Co-directors of the Santa Fe Singers, SF Adjunct Associate Professors of Music Mitchell Rorick and April Basiletti, are developing a musically diverse program that will include classical choral music, Hebrew folksongs and popular music.
The Gainesville Youth Chorus Concert Choir and Concertina Choir will perform as special guests, singing separately and together with the Santa Fe Singers. The Chorus’s choirs feature the voices of young people ages seven to 17.
“’Songs of the Season’ has music that will appeal to everyone, from Vivaldi’s ‘Gloria’ to jazz, folk and gospel selections,” Rorick said. “We’ll have live musical accompaniment, and we’re looking forward to the Gainesville Youth Chorus performing with us in the Fine Arts Hall.”
Mitchell Rorick has a Master of Music degree in Choral Conducting from Florida State University in Tallahassee and a Master of Music degree in Organ and Church Music from Indiana University Jacob’s School of Music in Bloomington. He taught music at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne. He is currently assistant artistic director of the Gainesville Youth Chorus and director of music and organist at Gainesville’s First Presbyterian Church.
April Basiletti studied voice performance at Wheaton College in Illinois and has a master’s degree in voice performance with a concentration in sacred music from the University of Florida (UF). At UF, she performed in two Opera Theater productions, Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte” and Bizet’s “Carmen.” While studying for her master’s degree, she was a choral scholar at Gainesville’s First Presbyterian Church.
“Songs of the Season” is organized and sponsored by the SF Fine Arts and Entertainment Technology Department. For more information about “Songs of the Season,” call Mitchell Rorick at 352-395-5296. For information about tickets, call the Fine Arts Hall Box Office at 352-395-4181.