The SIU Concert Choir and Choral Union perform together on stage under the direction of Emerson Eads, director of choral studies. (Photo by Erasmus Tornye)
November 04, 2026
‘Strangers and Pilgrims’ unites over 100 voices at Shryock Auditorium Nov. 10
CARBONDALE, Ill. — The Southern Illinois University Concert Choir and Choral Union close the semester with “Strangers and Pilgrims,” a free public concert at 7 p.m. Nov. 10 in Shryock Auditorium. The program features music by Igor Stravinsky, Adolphus Hailstork and Stephen Paulus.
The joint performance puts over 100 SIU students and community members on stage. For Emerson Eads, assistant professor and director of choral studies, that blend is what makes the night work.
“Choral music is about community,” Eads said. “It’s about people coming together — despite differences in age, political views, or incomes — to sing and create something far greater than themselves.”
Singing alongside lifelong vocalists gives students a look at what a life of making music in Southern Illinois might hold, while longtime members remember “what it was like to sing at SIU back in their day,” Eads said.
The first half of the program features Stravinsky’s “Symphony of Psalms,” written in 1930 for the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s 50th anniversary. Usually performed with a full orchestra, the work is heard here in Dmitri Shostakovich’s rarely performed arrangement for piano four hands, played by SIU faculty pianists Anthony Gray and Jiyeon Lee. The stripped-down setting puts the voices and Latin texts front and center.
The second half opens with Hailstork’s “I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes,” a gospel-influenced cantata featuring tenor soloist Roderick George, an SIU alumnus and professor of music at the University of Montevallo in Alabama. George, who has sung the demanding high tenor part for Hailstork himself, has also performed it with the Nashville Symphony and VocalEssence in Minneapolis.
Eads said Hailstork’s piece “brings together that gospel church sound that is so immediate and visceral, along with the more traditional elements of concert choral music.”
The concert takes its title from a line in Psalm 39 about being a stranger and a sojourner — contributing to the program’s theme of outsiders searching for a place to belong.
Before the final piece, the Rev. Joseph A. Brown, professor and director of the School of Africana and Multicultural Studies, addresses the audience while the choirs move to the balcony. Brown spoke at the choirs’ previous concert, and Eads said he invited him back to offer perspective, context and his personal reflection on the concert’s theme.
The evening closes with Paulus’ “Pilgrims’ Hymn,” sung a cappella from the balcony so the sound surrounds the audience. Eads said the piece is “the perfect thing to seal the concert.”