Ken Eckert’s
Concordia College Choir Site
This site is a photograph and media archive for the Concordia College Choir in Edmonton, Canada (Now Concordia University of Edmonton). I began as a first bass in the choir in the fall of 1988, and left in the spring of 1991, during which time I recorded several of the choir performances as well as the choir’s mini-group, Happy Together. The site is also meant as a continuing memorial to Prof. Gordon Hafso, our conductor.
Keeping in mind the technology I had at the time, the quality will vary. Most of the drawings which accompany this site are from posters made by Bill Quast, an art teacher at Concordia. Enjoy the page!
All of these media files are original works, public domain, or portions of performances qualifying as fair use. For personal, non-commercial use only. Legal notes Updated March 2021

About the Choir

In the 1980s, Concordia College was then a Lutheran university in Edmonton, Canada, part of the larger Concordia University group in the USA. The choir was about seventy people in size. We used to have a weekend mini-tour in November and a ten-day major tour in April or May, along with occasional church concerts and two large performances a year at First Presbyterian in downtown Edmonton. My chief memory of choir tours was spending far too much time on the bus and the ham-and-scalloped-potatoes that every church seemed to serve us.

HT was a subset of the choir which performed more contemporary music than a traditional choir could. The name Happy Together was fine in the 1960s, but it was more than a little cheesy by our time, so it was usually called HT. They later became Voices in Praise. The director of HT for 1989-90, Christa Poscente, is now an occasional recording Christian artist. She has a web link here.

I didn’t record the choir my first year. Our Christmas concert was at First Presbyterian in December 1988. It was recorded by Matt Day, and I did some remixing later. We made a closed recording on the May 1989 tour in a church in Issaquah, near Seattle. It always irritated me that we would put so much work into those sets, only to have them sold on cheap dollar-store cassettes. My first recording of the choir was in November 1989 when we were in Stony Plain, Alberta, and it was just two microphones hanging from the rafters. For the next two major tours I had my four-track and made better recordings with Corey Haberstock as my assistant. It was impossible to make a good recording at First Presbyterian with their old wiring, and so the Christmas 1990 concert was lost, though the TV recordings survive.

I also made live recordings of H.T. in the Concordia auditorium in April 1990, 1991, and 1992, except for the 1991 studio recording which Andreas Schwabe made and I mixed. Prof. Hafso was a popular professor and we mourned his passing in 2010, but I like to remember those days on tour of being billeted by quirky church members who would talk endlessly about their dogs or barbed-wire collections. I think about the stupid jokes we made about everything, usually about the effeminacy of the tenors, and about the fact that I first joined choir to meet girls (it didn’t work).

Music
December 1988
Amen 2:14 Save
Beautiful Savior 3:19 Save
Church Bells 3:59 Save
For Unto Us a Child is Born 5:00 Save
Hallelujah Chorus 4:24 Save
I Wonder as I Wander 4:07 Save
Ring de Christmas Bells 3:52 Save
Where Shepherds Lately Dwelt 3:15 Save
May 1989
Behold a Host 2:39 Save
Come, Jesus, Come 8:56 Save
Ehre Sei Dir, Christe 2:17 Save
Sicut Cervus 3:30 Save
Surely He Hath Borne Our Griefs 2:40 Save
Treasures in Heaven 3:22 Save
Upon This Rock 5:37 Save
Won’t You Say (H.T.) 1:48 Save
December 1989
A Joyous Christmas Story 1:21 Save
Dream Bethlehem 2:55 Save
Father, Lift Me Up (H.T.) 4:17 Save
Fum, Fum, Fum 1:44 Save
Of Christ We Sing 3:14 Save
O Holy Night 4:49 Save
Said the Angel Unto the Shepherd 2:46 Save
The Radiant Star 4:45 Save
May 1990
Der Geist Hilft Unswer Schacheit Auf 5:59 Save
Give Ear Unto My Voice 4:00 Save
If You But Trust in God to Guide You 3:09 Save
Mansion Builder (H.T.) 2:56 Save
O Lord the Very Heavens 3:10 Save
Te Deum 9:59 Save
Thee God We Praise 2:12 Save
Wake, Awake 3:57 Save
December 1990
Gaudete 2:39 Save
Gloria in Excelsis Deo 4:32 Save
Let the Earth With Praise Resound 4:07 Save
Let There Be Praise (H.T.) 2:48 Save
Lo, How a Rose e’er Blooming 2:13 Save
Silent Night 3:50 Save
There’s Been a Happening (H.T.) 3:07 Save
The Shepherd’s Pipe Carol 3:23 Save
May 1991
Be Not Afraid (Bach Motet No. 4) 8:30 Save
In the Beginning 1:56 Save
Love is Patient and Kind 4:21 Save
O Lord, How Shall I Meet Thee? 3:21 Save
Praise to the Lord 3:49 Save
Savior Like a Shepherd Lead Us 2:53 Save
Saul 6:54 Save
The Great Commandment 2:21 Save
Happy Together April 1990
God is My Rock 1:23 Save
Heaven Came to Earth 2:54 Save
I Have Decided 2:50 Save
Prayer For Peace 1:37 Save
Screen Door 2:16 Save
Happy Together April 1991
Gotta Do Right 2:26 Save
Parable of the River 5:24 Save
Just As I Am 2:41 Save
Lean on Me 2:53 Save
Sing Over Me 3:48 Save
Yes, Lord, Yes 3:15 Save
You Put This Love in My Heart 2:46 Save
Happy Together April 1992
And Can It Be 4:10 Save
Christ The Lord is Risen Today 3:52 Save
Somebody’s Gonna Praise His Name 3:40 Save
Legal notes