TheBakersfieldCalifornian.com

The touring choir of Concordia University in Seward, Neb., will stop in Bakersfield to perform and say hello to former students. The 16-member University A Capella Choir is the traveling ensemble for Concordia, and will perform at St. John's Lutheran Church, 4500 Buena Vista Road, at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 9. Director Kurt von Kampen said the program will include sacred and secular music representing several musical eras.

"We do everything from four-part chorales to spirituals and gospel," von Kampen said.

The choir will sing the motet, "Lobet den Herren," ("Praise to the Lord") by early Baroque composer Melchior Franck; hymns and spirituals from various traditions, plus some folk songs and children's songs.

Von Kampen said the choir included Bakersfield on its tour not only to perform, but to recruit students and visit with Concordia alumni.

"One of the benefits of taking the choir out is that high school students, or parents and grandparents of high school students, get to see what we're about," von Kampen said.

Among the alumni is Paul Tepker, who is the music director at St. John's. Tepker said he, his wife, and several other members of St. John's attended the school in the 1970s.

"It was primarily a teachers' college then," Tepker said.

Tepker explained that the Nebraska school is part of the 10-school Concordia University system, a part of the Missouri Synod, or council, of Lutheran Churches in the United States. In addition to St. John's, there are several other Kern County churches that are part of the Missouri Synod, including three more in Bakersfield, plus churches in Taft, Lake Isabella and Ridgecrest.

"The Missouri Synod schools all have large music departments," Tepker explained. "Organ and choirs were the main thing when I attended; now there is more emphasis on contemporary music."

The Lutheran choral tradition goes back to the beginning of the Protestant Reformation and its leader, Martin Luther, the Catholic priest who protested church practices of his time. Among Luther's criticisms was that trained choirs sung the music used for Mass in Latin, to the exclusion of the common people, who didn't speak the language. Luther advocated simple four-part hymns written in the vernacular (in his case, German) so everyone could participate.

Over its history, the Lutheran church has been blessed with many great composers, including Dietrich Buxtehude, Heinrich Schutz, Franck, and most famously, Johann Sebastian Bach, who wrote music for church services that have also become established as concert masterworks. "High Church" Lutheran liturgy still uses many of those masterworks in worship, which combines trained singers with the congregation.