Published: July 03, 2008 11:34 am            

Harvard Glee Club

A musical treat is in store for Effingham area residents when the Harvard Glee Club performs at 7 p.m. Wednesday, July 9, at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church, Effingham.

Tickets for the performance are $15 for adults and $8 for seniors and students. Tickets are available by calling 1-800-838-3006, online at www.harvardgleeclub.org/tour/Effingham.html or at the door.

In addition to an evening of great music, a special treat will be the appearance of Farina native Quentin Sedlacek. He is a 2005 graduate of South Central High School, Farina, and a 2008 graduate of Harvard with a degree in physics. He serves as president of Harvard Glee Club and performs as a tenor with the group. Sedlacek is the son of Mark and Ann Sedlacek of Farina and the grandson of Charles and Zola Blomberg of Farina.

Sedlacek has performed with the glee club all four years that he attended Harvard. After completing the group’s summer tour, Sedlacek has accepted a position with World Teach to teach science in American Samoa for the next school year.

Harvard Glee Club was founded in 1858 and this year marks its 150th anniversary. On its 150th anniversary tour, Harvard Glee Club will perform at St. Anthony of Padua Parish during its sesquicentennial.

Harvard Glee Club is America’s oldest collegiate choir whose 60-voice men’s choir performs a range of music from Renaissance polyphony to classical, contemporary and folk music. Conducted by Dr. Jameson Marvin, the group is often considered the top men’s choir in America.

Alumni of the glee club who have went on to musical careers includes Virgil Thomson, Leonard Bernstein, Irving Fine, John Harbison and Elliott Carter, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner who credited his knowledge of music to his experience with the choir. Non-musical alumni include former U.S. presidents, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt; author John “Jack” Reed; former Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun; and U.S. Senator Jesse Francis “Jeff” Bingaman Jr.

This will the glee club’s first appearance in Effingham, but the group has performed twice with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, at New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra and Netherlands Chamber Orchestra and performed at the Vatican under the baton of Leonard Bernstein.