After a fabulous Christmas concert, we went our separate ways for a brief shore leave, only to reconvene and recombine for our next event: Lenten Prayer!
Saturday - March 4, 2017 - 8 p.m. St. Ignatius
Tell ALL of your friends! Begin inviting people /now/!! We have some wonderful music.
I shouldn't call Lenten Prayer a "concert" - not exactly, not really. It's more of a musical offering or worship concert, offered with no applause before/during/or after. LP provides an hour of engaged listening, contemplation, reflection and meditation. Most of the people who attend LP are Roman Catholics or members of another faith tradition that follows a liturgical calendar. In these traditions, the Ash Wednesday begins a 40-day period (Lent) leading up to Easter (which is always, btw, the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox).
Wikipedia article about Lent.
But not everyone is a R.C. - in fact, not everyone who comes to our LP or ChrC concerts is even "religious."
Our choir is as diverse (perhaps more diverse) as our audiences. Some of our choir folk identify with world faith traditions other than Christianity. Others identify as agnostics, seekers, or atheists. Still others are (in Karen Armstrong's delightful self-identification) "freelance monotheists."
This, I say, is a Very Good Thing.
If you find yourself saying to yourself, "I don't know if I can really relate to the text of this song," think again - look at it from a "macro" perspective. I challenge you to determine the Big Story expressed by the music we're singing. What human needs, aspirations, challenges, experiences, etc. are being explored and expressed in this music? If you think of the texts as "particulars," where and what is the "universal??" What's there for everyone to gather and to find nourishment?
Okay, end of sermon.
And now!
Composer of the Week: William Grant Still (1895 - 1978)
Read about him here at the mighty fount of all knowledge, Wikipedia
His surviving family operates a website with biographical material, sources, and other good things.
Here's a link to what is perhaps his best known composition, "Afro-American Symphony" -
Movement 1 What's happening at the beginning of this movement (form)?
Movement 2
Movement 3 scoring includes an instrument not usually found in symphony orchestras - what is it?!
Movement 4
WGS was a very fine pianist and wrote many wonderful piano pieces.
Here's one: "Summerland."
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