Bisonette Glee Club to Host Spring Concert April 30

April 28, 2016

The 70-member Bisonette Glee Club, the women’s glee club from Oklahoma Baptist University, will present their spring concert, “Loveliness, Light, and Life,” Saturday, April 30, at 7:30 p.m. The concert will take place in Raley Chapel’s Yarborough Auditorium on the OBU campus in Shawnee. The concert is free and open to the public.  

The Bisonettes are under the direction of Dr. James Vernon, professor of music. The group will be joined in concert by the Fairland High School Choir from Fairland, Oklahoma, under the direction of Brittany Seale.

Featured on this concert will be new compositions by Laurel Page and Seth Wright; student conductors Courtney King, MaryKathryn Daugherty, Elin Williams and Jessi Cadenhead; and student accompanists Megan Mattke, Mary Crone and Rachel Foote.

The Bisonettes were founded in 1954 by Warren M. Angell, former dean of the College of Fine Arts. Membership in the group is by annual audition. This year’s membership includes students from Oklahoma, Texas, California, Arkansas, Alaska, Missouri, Colorado, Haiti and Spain. While music majors comprise a large number of the singers, the group is represented by a variety of other majors, including nursing, art, graphic design, biblical languages, psychology, biology and English.

The group performs at a wide range of campus events and off-campus concerts, including an annual tour of churches and schools. The Bisonettes’ repertoire represents a wide range of compositional styles in both sacred and secular musical formats, and showcases choral standards, traditional numbers and contemporary compositions.

Jack Pearson, former director for 33 years, authored a book titled “O Sing Unto The Lord: A History of the Bisonettes—the Other Glee Club,” detailing the history of women's glee clubs since 1919 with a year by year history of the Bisonettes since 1954.