VALPARAISO | The Valparaiso University Chorale, which recently completed a 10-day West Coast tour, will be featured with the acclaimed Alice Millar Brass Ensemble during the David G. Truemper Memorial Concert on April 1.

The fifth annual Truemper Memorial Concert is being performed in conjunction with Valparaiso's annual Institute for Liturgical Studies and begins at 8 p.m. in the Chapel of the Resurrection on campus.

Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for senior citizens and students. Call (219) 464-6950 to purchase tickets.

This year's concert, exploring "The Church's Song in the Public Square," will feature the performance of a variety of contemporary hymns with commentary by the Rev. James Wetzstein, associate pastor at the university and an expert on liturgical art. New hymns from the recently-published worship books of both the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will be performed, along with Morten Lauridsen's "O Nata Lux," Samuel Barber's "Easter Chorale" and other works.

The chorale is one of the nation's premier Lutheran collegiate choirs and earlier this spring presented the concert "Songs of Pain, Protest, Gratitude and Celebration: A Tapestry of Classical, Global and Gospel Psalmody," during the Central Division Convention of the American Choral Directors Association. The choir tours annually across the United States and abroad and has released six CDs under the direction of Christopher M. Cock, Phyllis and Richard Duesenberg chair of Lutheran music.

The Millar Brass Ensemble, a Chicago-based group founded in 1981, has developed an international reputation as one of the finest brass ensembles in the world. The group has recorded seven albums and its members perform with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Grant Park Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and other regional orchestras and chamber groups.

Truemper served for 20 years as the executive director of the Institute of Liturgical Studies and guided its growth as one of the leading gatherings of pastors, church musicians, liturgical artists, lay worship leaders and religious scholars to study and reflect on the renewal of worship.

More information about the institute is available online at valpo.edu/ils.

--The Times