Friday's Arkansas Sounds Concert Series show leaves the instruments at the door and turns up the volume on vocals as the Top of the Rock Chorus and Acapella Rising hit the stage.
The two central Arkansas-based singing groups will each take the stage for their respective sets and then join for a finale. The concert, at the Central Arkansas Library System's Ron Robinson Theater, is the latest in the Arkansas Sounds series, a project of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, a department of the library system.
Acapella Rising, Top of the Rock
7 p.m. Friday, Ron Robinson Theater, 100 Rock St., Little Rock
Admission: Free
(501) 320-5728
"We'll do a 45-minute set," says Kelly Causey, Top of the Rock musical director. "We'll be singing a variety of songs from our repertoire -- show tunes, some of our contest tunes and popular music."
Top of the Rock's smaller choruses -- quartets and small ensembles -- will also be featured, she says.
"We also have the pleasure of singing a joint number with Acapella Rising, 'Let There Be Peace on Earth,' an eight-part arrangement that should be really cool."
Top of the Rock has about 55 local singers, says Causey, who expects 48 of those to perform Friday. The group is a chapter of Sweet Adelines International, a nonprofit group based in Oklahoma that has about 30,000 members in choruses and quartets worldwide.
Top of the Rock also participates each year in a regional chorus competition. In 2014, the group placed third in the Harmony Classics Division AA contest in Baltimore.
Acapella Rising, a men's barbershop chorus, is a member of the Society for the Preservation of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America and has about 30 members, says chapter president Terry Mercing. The chorus was formerly known as Diamond State Chorus and was chartered in 1945.
As with Top of the Rock, this will be the first time Acapella Rising has performed at Ron Robinson. Also, like the women's group, the men take part in competitions, placing fourth in a recent district contest.
Expect the men to dip into their bag of pop tunes such as "Eight Days a Week," "Hakuna Matada," "Death of a Bachelor" and others, says Mercing, who has been a part of the local chapter for 45 years.
And if all that vocalizing whets your whistle for more, the two groups, along with the Crystal Chimes Chorus, a women's group from Hot Springs Village, will perform together again during a Dec. 9 Christmas program at Pulaski Technical College Center for the Humanities and Arts and on Dec. 10 at Woodlands Auditorium in Hot Springs Village.
Weekend on 10/26/2017