Presenting an hour of uplifting choral selections reminiscent of the holiday season, the Liberte Women's Ensemble will perform its fall concert, "Years End," at 4 p.m. Nov. 11 at First Christian Church, 327 Capitol Ave.
The group has been performing since 2012, starting out as an auxiliary group to the Monticello Singers men's choir. They have since formed their own nonprofit group of up to 20 women to perform free concerts twice a year.
"One of our mission statements is that we want to provide quality choral music for the public with no cost," Director Carol Beach said.
The formation of the group has also provided an outlet for music lovers as a place where they can enjoy performing outside of their other musical obligations. Several women in the group are current or retired music teachers and almost everyone in the group has extensive choir experience and performs with other groups such as the Jefferson City Cantorum, orchestra or in one of the many local theater groups.
"It's a pretty diverse group but everybody really loves music and has the ability to do a really good job," Beach said.
"We're an audition group so the goal is to keep it small but we do have requirements," she added. "You do have to be able to read music and you have to be able to be self motivated and work on this stuff on your own because we have a very limited rehearsal schedule, we usually only rehearse about 10 times to do a full hour concert."
For their upcoming performance, the group will present 13 pieces including guest performances with JC Symphony violinist Johanna Boyer and Maddie Arnold who attended districts with the Helias Catholic High School Choir last year. Each piece is said to reflect the holidays, but within a wide variety of musical styles.
"We like to perform a lot of different varieties of music," Beach said. "It's never going to be one type of song that you're going to hear or one composer. It's going to be everything from the very earliest renaissance pieces to 20th century weird harmony stuff or pop songs or a jazz piece, so we have a varied concert each time."
There are no tickets required at the door since the concert is free to the public. However, donations and sponsorships to support the program are welcome.