In 1891, the grand experiment of James Huff Stout began: to establish a manual training school here in Menomonie, WI, which was among the first of its kind in the country. Since its first years with the modest offer of classes in cooking, drawing, dressmaking, sewing, woodworking and mechanical drawing, Stout’s visionary institution has gone on to become the University of Wisconsin-Stout — the only campus within the UW System that receives the polytechnics designation, offering close to 50 undergraduate programs and over 21 graduate majors. In short, our university is a sound experiment in education. It is in the spirit of experiment that the musical selection is made for the UW-Stout Choral Concert, taking place at the end of our university’s 125th anniversary. Each piece serves to demonstrate how composers seek innovation in creating music for choir, whether by pushing an existing technique to its limits, by incorporating new sounds into singing, or by infusing the Euro-centric choral art with elements of different cultures. The program will feature works by Adele, Bach, Bernstein, Diaconescu, Hopkins, Lassus, Mäntyjärvi, Messiaen, Palestrina, Powell, Simon and Garfunkel, Toch, and more.