Strunk

SHEPHERDSTOWN — Prior to transitioning into his current role as the Shepherd University director of choral and vocal activities, Jason Strunk was serving in a similar position at Georgetown Day School. He was keeping busy, in his spare time, by founding his own professional choir, with a focus on creating what he described as “choral theater,” in the Washington, D.C. area.

This season, that choir is moving its base of operations to Shepherdstown. It will be presenting its first concert, “Rejoice! Music For the Season,” at Shepherdstown Presbyterian Church on Dec. 13 at 7:30 p.m.

“We are so excited to be moving our operations to Shepherdstown and to be sharing our music with the community here,” Strunk, who serves as the choir’s artistic director, said. “I personally feel so embraced here, and I hope the choir will be similarly embraced by the community.”

Renatum Chamber Choir will be the first professional chamber choir in the Eastern Panhandle and one of the few, if not the first, in the state. For Strunk, this was one major reason he wanted to move the choir — whose name means “rebirth” in Latin — to the state.

“One of our visions is to combat this idea that rural America is void of intellectuals and artists,” Strunk said. “There are a number of members of our choir who went away to university to get advanced degrees in vocal performance. They were from a rural area. When they returned home, too often they found themselves without an outlet to use those skills. We are here to be that performance outlet for them.”

More than one of the 16 members of the choir have a connection to rural America and the Appalachian region, in particular. Some of them, like tenor Austin Showen, are music professors at Shepherd. Others, like alto Lauren Frick and soprano Micheala Woodbrey, are alumni of Shepherd University School of Music and West Virginia University School of Music, respectively. Still others, like Strunk himself, have deep family ties to the region — growing up in coal mining country in rural Pennsylvania and having ancestors from Berkeley Springs, in his case.

“We hope to be a model to other rural areas across the country, to say, ‘You can do this,'” Strunk said. “We can teach them how to do this.”

He noted there are a handful of members in the choir who live far from the region, but are so committed that they fly in from wherever they are based — Hollywood, Miami, Cleveland, St. Louis and New York — to participate in each concert. This upcoming concert, with its focus on Christmas themes, will be no exception.

“The concept behind the story we will be telling is this — just at the base of the story of Christmas is the story of ‘otherness.’ It’s the story of an unwed couple having a baby. It’s the story of refugees having this child. It’s the story of the poorest among us being honored with news. It’s the story of foreigners being compelled to go to a different country, for something better. It’s all of these things that we are confronted with still in our lives, today,” Strunk said. “And yet, in the middle of all of that, there’s the birth of this child. Children bring the same thing to all of us, no matter if we are poor or rich, if we are homeless or housed, if we are foreigners or natives — it’s this idea of newness and hope and joy and peace. That’s the story of Christmas.”

The text for the songs in the choir’s program will be available at this and all of its future performances.

To learn more and purchase tickets, visit https://renatum.ticketspice.com/rejoice-choral-music-for-this-season. Tickets cost $32.07 for general admission and $6.20 for Shepherd University students.

Shepherdstown Presbyterian Church is located at 100 West Washington Street.