The University of Notre Dame Glee Club will perform the final concert of its 2023 Spring Tour at St. Henry Church at 7 p.m. Saturday, March 18.
The concert is free and open to the public. A donation will be collected to help offset the Glee Club’s travel expenses.
“The Glee Club always delivers an entertaining and beautiful selection of a capella music arranged specifically for all-male choruses,” said Chris Fenoglio, a music minister at St. Henry Church and an alumni member of the Glee Club.
The wide-ranging program will include sacred music by Gabrieli, Victoria and Mendelssohn, a collection of European art and folk songs in advance of the Glee Club’s 2023 European tour, a tribute to American musical icon Stevie Wonder, Irish music for St. Patrick’s Day and the favorite school songs of Notre Dame.
As is custom at all Glee Club concerts, alumni members in attendance at concerts are invited to join the current members in singing the school songs. “It’s always an honor to sing with the Glee Club and again represent the university, if only for a few songs,” said Fenoglio.
St. Henry Church needs temporary housing for 47 Glee Club members the night of March 18. Participating homes will meet the Glee Clubbers after the concert and will need to return them to St. Henry Sunday morning. If you would like to host the students in your home, please email Carol Wieck at carolw81@gmail.com.
Music City has several connections to the Notre Dame Glee Club.
Chris and Tricia Casa Santa are parishioners at the Cathedral of the Incarnation and members of the Notre Dame Club of Nashville. Chris’s grandfather was Joseph Casasanta, believed to be the first student to receive a bachelor’s degree in music from the school.
As a student, Casasanta held leadership positions in both the Glee Club and the marching band. After graduation in 1923, he later became the university’s Director of Music and led the Glee Club, marching band, and the orchestra.
Casasanta’s enduring legacy at the university lies in his music compositions, as he composed the music for “Notre Dame, Our Mother,” the school’s alma mater, as well as the current arrangement of the “Notre Dame Victory March.” He also wrote “On Down the Line,” “When the Irish Backs Go Marching By,” and co-wrote “Hike, Notre Dame.”
The current Glee Club director draws many parallels with Casasanta.
Daniel Stowe has been a member of the University of Notre Dame faculty since 1993. In addition to directing the Glee Club, he is also conductor of the Notre Dame Symphony Orchestra and the Notre Dame Collegium Musicum, and teaches music history and conducting.
Each year, the 60-voice chorus presents a wide-ranging repertoire in several formal campus and tour concerts as well as in dozens of informal performances at university events.
The club’s membership is drawn from all courses of study at the university; their concert programs customarily include classical a cappella music for men’s chorus as well as folk songs, African-American spirituals, barbershop arrangements, and songs of Notre Dame.
The club tours domestically twice each year, and internationally once every other year; over the last quarter-century they have performed in more than 40 U.S. states and in 20 countries in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
The Glee Club celebrated its 100th anniversary as a campus ensemble in the 2015-16 school year, welcoming more than 500 alumni back to campus for a reunion celebration and a 90-minute performance.
Among several Glee Club recordings are “Beautiful Rain” (2007), “On the Rocky Road to Dublin” (2012), and “Loyal Sons” (2016). Their most recent collection is “Christmas at Notre Dame” (2017), with the Notre Dame Symphony Orchestra.
Read more about the Notre Dame Glee Club at http://ndgleeclub.com.
St. Henry Church is located at 6401 Harding Road, Nashville, 37205.
