Northwest Choirs bring classical music to Senatobia

Photo: Northwest Choirs performed in Fall of 2024 directed by Dr. Alex Belohlavek. (Photo by Sarah Smith)

by Sarah Smith

April 7, 2025 – Northwest Mississippi Community College’s choirs are working together to bring a concert honoring music from around the world including the music of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, which has 800 years of musical history on April 10 at 7 p.m. at the Heindl Center for the Performing Arts.

This concert will feature French and Latin text with translations provided in programs and several pieces in English that help balance out the program, according to the Director of Choral Activities, Dr. Alex Belohlavek.

“Our program mostly consists of music written by composers who were either in residence at the cathedral or associated with Paris generally,” said Belohlavek. “This includes the romantic Messe Breve by Leo Delibes, renaissance Parisian chansons by Sermisy and Certon, the “Kyrie” from Messe de Nostre Dame, which was the first complete ordinary of the mass composed by Guillaume de Machaut, as well as a preview of several movements from Gabriel Faure’s Requiem, which will be performed in full with orchestra on May 2 at First Presbyterian Church in Oxford.”

Belohlavek said the most important piece is “Kyrie” which is from Machaut’s “Messe de Nostre Dame.” It is an example of late Medieval polyphony which will be performed by the Ranger Consort who have been working diligently to prepare to perform it.

They also will be preparing pieces that are new as well as including materials they learned from their last fall concert “Color All Maps New” which premiered in the fall. After this concert, the Northwest choirs will continue singing this semester at Oxford on May 10 at the First Presbyterian Church and then in New York City at Carnegie Hall on June 1.

The concert is free and open to the public, doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the concert begins at 7:00 p.m.