![\"Peter](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Peter-Bagley-UConn-Choirs-136-300x200.jpg\")
In the Bagley way, Spillane and a group of UConn alumni decided the best way to honor their beloved mentor would be through song, a special one for UConn\u2019s former director of choral activities that\u2019s become tradition at the University since Bagley first staged it many holiday seasons ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cHandel\u2019s \u2018Messiah\u2019 was one of Peter\u2019s favorite things,\u201d Spillane says. \u201cIt\u2019s a piece that never really feels old and has lasted since the 1700s. It\u2019s wonderful because it is the most programmed piece of choral music in history. It\u2019s performed throughout the world every year.\u201d<\/p>\n
And Bagley loved its \u201cHallelujah\u201d chorus.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were lucky to know him and honoring him with a memorial concert just seems so appropriate. He was brilliant and beloved and had just a profound effect on so many,\u201d Spillane says.<\/p>\n
The Dr. Peter Bagley Memorial Messiah-Sing<\/a>, which will be held Saturday, Sept. 21, will feature 120 alumni, all Bagley\u2019s former students, including 14 alumni conductors and 10 soloists. A handful of current UConn music students also will lend their voices, along with instrumental accompaniment from the UConn Symphony Orchestra<\/a>.<\/p>\n Spillane says alumni are coming in from all over the country, some who have established careers in music and others who pursued a range of other vocations \u2013 all influenced by the man who headed UConn\u2019s choral program<\/a> for 28 years and also served as a special assistant to the dean in the School of Fine Arts<\/a>.<\/p>\n UConn Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Anne D\u2019Alleva, who worked with Bagley first when she was a professor in the art and art history department and then when she was named SFA dean, will offer remarks. Louis Hanzlik, trumpet professor and head of the music department<\/a>, also will speak.<\/p>\n Former students from Bagley\u2019s first college teaching position at SUNY New Paltz are joining, with rehearsals starting Friday for soloists and conductors. Early Saturday, the full choir and piano will rehearse before the UConn Symphony Orchestra joins in the afternoon just before a 5 p.m. show.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s just a buzz among the alumni that they\u2019re coming back and have a chance to honor him,\u201d Spillane says. \u201cThey\u2019re excited to be back together, different eras of students from his 40-plus-year career. We have some who were students of his when he was a very young man and some from the last years of his teaching.\u201d<\/p>\n His legacy lives in these alums, Spillane says, when they teach and their students go on to be teachers. It\u2019s not hard to believe there are generations of choral music educators and performers around the country who have directly or indirectly been influenced by Bagley.<\/p>\n And that all started in 1957 when he became the first Black teacher in the Greenwich public school system \u2013 never mind a Black conductor in a profession that has favored white men.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was certainly the most famous of all of us,\u201d Spillane says of UConn\u2019s history of choral leaders that includes John Poellein before Bagley. \u201cHe also was the most important of all of us. His effect on choral music and breaking the color barrier in choral music is so profound.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n