CLASSICAL MUSIC / KENNETH HERMAN : Venerable St. Olaf Choir Is Still Setting the Pace

In an ecumenical sign of the times, the touring St. Olaf Choir will present its local concert tonight at the University of San Diego’s Immaculata Church. The noted Lutheran musical organization has set the pace for touring college choirs since its founder, F. Melius Christiansen, started taking the choir on the road in 1912.

Performing on the campus of a Catholic University is actually one of the 70-member choir’s less exotic venues. Two years ago the choir celebrated its 75th anniversary with a tour to Japan and the Peoples Republic of China.

Last August, the choir performed on Korean national television the night before the Seoul Olympics Arts Festival opened. At the opening concert of the Summer Olympics’ arts festival, the choir sang in the Korean capital’s newest concert hall. One of only five choirs from around the world to be invited to the festival, the St. Olaf Choir was joined by choral groups from Canada, West Germany, Brazil and Japan.

Kenneth Jennings, the choir’s director for the past 20 years, brought to the festival a program neatly divided between works by J. S. Bach and 20th-Century American composers, an appropriate gesture for the choir representing America’s choral tradition. But the festival’s most exciting musical event, according to Jennings, was a joint concert that united the five visiting choirs with five Korean choirs and the Korean National Orchestra.

“That performance made quite a din,” Jennings said. “They have tremendous choirs over there that produce a deep, full choral sound. There is a heavy German and Russian influence--they don’t sound like the singers in a Chinese opera.”

When asked to list trends in American choral music over the last two decades, Jennings noted a certain retrenchment from some of the more experimental compositions of the 1970s, especially those that included electronic music or chance factors.

“I think we’ve turned around from the strident avant-garde. There is a certain neo-Romanticism in vogue, not unlike that found in orchestral music. I particularly note this trend among the students who sing in the choir. They want music that has much more emotional content.”

The 8 p.m. program at USD includes the predictable Bach motet and a Mozart “Missa Brevis,” as well as sacred works by Jean Berger, Anton Heiler and Hugo Distler.

Art for music’s sake. To promote its young people’s concerts, the San Diego Symphony has approached the most knowledgeable consultants for its target audience. Educational coordinator Marilyn Rue announced a poster contest for school-age youths who have attended any of the family or young people’s concerts. The students may illustrate any part of the concert experience, from impressions evoked by the music to the flamboyant conducting style of Murry Sidlin, regular conductor for these series. And all artistic media from paint to crayons are acceptable.

Not only will the symphony’s marketing department use the winning poster for next season’s publicity, but Ovation magazine, a national classical music periodical, has offered to publish the winning entry.

Budding artists have until May 1 to send their entries to Rue at the symphony offices. Sidlin and the orchestra will play another set of young people’s concerts March 29-30, for those who missed the earlier offerings.

The conductor who came in from the cold. Speaking of Murry Sidlin, the globe-trotting conductor seems to use San Diego as his favorite place to thaw out. Prior to the three concerts he did with the San Diego Symphony last week, Sidlin guest conducted the Anchorage Symphony at the Alaska Performing Arts Center in Anchorage. When he was on the local podium in December for the inaugural concert of the orchestra’s new Classical Hits series, he had just completed a conducting engagement in Iceland.

Robeson remembered. As part of KPBS-FM’s celebration of black history month, the station will broadcast a documentary recollecting the musical and political career of Paul Robeson at 3:30 p.m. Thursday. This BBC-produced documentary intersperses archive recordings of the great bass-baritone with reminiscences by his son and others who knew him.

Early Music Ensemble gambles on Las Vegas. Singing Renaissance and Baroque music in period costumes has been the calling card of the San Diego Early Music Ensemble for the past 15 years. According to alto Vicki Heins-Shaw, the group finally got its first gig in Las Vegas, although she and her colleagues are not about to trade in their Renaissance velvets for sequins and spangles. And, although they have not been hired as the latest warm-up act for singer Wayne Newton, the early-music specialists will be slightly out of their element. The singers have been contracted as soloists for Luciano Berio’s 1968 “Sinfonia” for voices and orchestra to be performed at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, on March 5.