SING ALONG WITH AMERICA.

Byline: Fred Crafts The Register-Guard

POP QUIZ: How many of the following songs can you sing? "Johnny Comes Marching Home," "This Land Is Your Land," "On Top of Old Smokey," "Down by the Riverside," "Home on the Range," "Streets of Laredo" and "Alleluia."

If you know all seven, chances are you sang in a high school choir a while back, and chances are therefore great that you will know, by heart, most, if not all, of the songs that the Eugene Concert Choir will sing during its "Americana" concert March 8-9.

Artistic director and conductor Diane Retallack chose every song to point up pride in all things American. "It's not just a concert, it's a show," she says. "I hope it will be stirring and inspiring to people."

Dividing the program into two distinct moods, Retallack will survey songs from the colonial, Revolutionary War, slavery and Civil War periods in the first half, then move forward with songs from the westward expansion. The 80-voice Eugene Concert Choir will feature choir member John Vavrek as the narrator, providing historical context.

Retallack began assembling the concert after the events of Sept. 11, 2001. About the same time, her choir received an invitation to sing on June 24 of this year as part of a massed choral extravaganza in Beijing's Forbidden City. Retallack believes American folk songs would be the most representative music her choir could sing.

Besides folk songs and spirituals, the program will include works by composers Stephen Foster, Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein.

Retallack says one reason she is doing the concert is to familiarize new audiences with some grand old songs.

"I am totally amazed when people don't know our own good, old- fashioned folk songs," she says. "They used to be sung in the schools all the time. And with the deletion of funds for school music, I think they are sung less and less. I hope there will be enough people who will remember and will sing along."

They will get a chance to do just that on such tunes such as "Polly Wolly Doodle," "Down in the Valley," "The Erie Canal," "I've Been Working on the Railroad," and "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain When She Comes."

And to teach young people these songs, Retallack and the choir, with some help from storyteller-songwriter Robert Rubinstein, will hold a free, informal workshop for small children at 11 a.m. Saturday in the Hult Center's Studio One. Participants will sit on bales of hay around a simulated campfire.

"These are songs that have been carried along for years and years because people have a need to sing to sing them, and because they say something," Retallack says. "They're part of our heritage and we can be proud of them. We don't want them to just sit in a museum. We want them to live."

Fred Crafts can be reached at 338-2575 or [e-mail].

CONCERT PREVIEW

Americana

What: Classical, folk songs and spirituals will sung by the Eugene Concert Choir, conducted by Diane Retallack, with the Sacred Harp Singers, the Red Oak Station Bluegrass Band and the Danebo Circle Eights square dancers

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday; 2:30 p.m. March 9

Where: Soreng Theatre, Hult Center, Seventh and Willamette streets

How much: $9 to $24 through the Hult Center box office, 682-5000

Also: Free children's sing-along, 11 a.m. Saturday, Hult Center's Studio One

GuardLine: To hear some of the music, call GuardLine at 485-2000 from a touch-tone phone and request category 3733

CAPTION(S):

Left: Diane Retallack hopes the show will be `stirring and inspiring.' The Eugene Concert Choir gets folksy with tunes you likely know by heart