Wooster Music Club April program includes accordion
Among the performers at Wooster Music Club’s April meeting was Meg Litteral, who played several pieces on both accordion and piano.
The Wooster Music Club held its April 2 program and meeting at the Wooster United Methodist Church in Wesley Hall as President Judithe Craig welcomed members and guests.
The program began with Dilgard Scholarship recipient Micah Schlegel, a pianist and piano student of Myra Leeper, who played “Fairest Lord Jesus,” arranged by Clarence Kohlmann. Schlegel is currently a 10th-grade student at Wooster Christian School.
Meg Litteral then performed several pieces on both accordion and piano. She learned to play the accordion from her father when her family spent their summers in Newfoundland singing and playing accordion under the gospel tent. Many original accordion songs and lyrics come from the Newfoundland coast, depicting the harshness of life in times past.
Litteral shared the lyrics for club members to sing along as she performed two pieces on the accordion: “I’s the B’y” and “Feller from Fortune,” both traditional folk pieces. Her third piece on accordion was a gospel piece titled “He’s the Fairest of 10,000.” She concluded her performance on piano with “My God Is Real.”
Margaret Latta on flute and Annie Gerig on English horn played four duets: “The Cuckoo” (no known composer), “The Happy Farmer” by Robert Schumann, and two separate pieces from Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “6 Studies from English Folk Song” titled “Larghetto” and “Adagio.”
Music, song and recitation excerpts from “Anne of Green Gables” by Lucy Maude Montgomery were presented by the following cast: Eric Fairhurst as the narrator and Matthew Cuthbert, Marilyn Hyde as Anne Shirley, Day Loganas as Marilla Cuthbert, and Louie Miller as Mrs. Lynde. The edited story covers the moment when Anne is picked up from the orphanage by Matthew Cuthbert until the time Matthew and Marilla decide to keep Anne as their own.
Interspersed throughout the performance were several songs played at key moments within the script. On vocals and piano was Judithe Craig, and vocalist Louie Miller sang “Lavenders Blue,” “You Talk Too Much,” “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” and “The Circle Game.”
The program concluded with Marilyn Hyde reciting poetry and two original haikus. The poems included “I Thank You God For Most This Amazing” by E.E. Cummings and “On the Shady Side” by Rabindranath Tagore. Hyde’s two original haikus were “Gourd” and “Wooly Worm.”
The Wooster Music Club meets the first Tuesday of the month at 6:30 p.m. from September through May, with the exception of January and February, at Wesley Hall in the Wooster United Methodist Church. Guests are welcome.