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Worship service features Singers, Chamber Choir


Last updated January 23, 2013

By News administrator

Furman University will present a worship service to close its annual Church Music Conference Friday, Jan. 25 at 4:30 p.m. in Daniel Recital Hall on the Furman campus.

“A Service of Psalms” is free and open to the public and features prayers, readings, meditations, hymns and anthems. Musicians for the service are the Furman Singers and Furman Chamber Choir with Furman faculty organist Charles Tomkins.

The Furman Singers and Chamber Choir will be conducted by Furman music faculty members Hugh Ferguson Floyd and William Thomas, and guest clinician Jerry Blackstone.

Officiates for the service are Furman chaplain Vaughn Crowe Tipton and guest clinician Rev. Don E. Saliers.

The service is the capstone event for the two-day Church Music Conference. Established in 1971 and sponsored by a grant from the Thomson Foundation, the Furman University Church Music Conference features nationally and internationally known musicians and clergy who present lectures related to the study and practice of church music.

Grammy-winning conductor Blackstone is the director of choirs and chair of the conducting department at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance. Nationally and internationally active as a conductor, he is also one of the country’s leading conducting teachers. His students have received first place awards and have been finalists in both the undergraduate and graduate divisions of the American Choral Directors Association choral conducting competition.

Saliers is the William R. Cannon Distinguished Professor of Theology and Worship, Emeritus, and past director of the Master of Sacred Music program at Emory University and the Candler School of Theology. He has written extensively about worship and music, including Music and Theology (2008), A Song to Sing, A Life to Live (with daughter Emily Saliers, 2004), Worship Come to Its Senses (1996), and Worship as Theology (1994).

For more information about the service, contact the Furman University Music Department at 864-294-2086, or email FurmanMusic@furman.edu, or visit the Music Department’s website at www.furman.edu/music.

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