We invite you to join us for our winter concert, MUSIC SPREAD THY VOICE! at Walnut Hills Baptist Church on Tuesday, December 15th, 2009. The program will honor two musical milestones—Felix Mendelssohn’s 200th birthday and the 250th anniversary of the death of Georg Friedrich Händel— and include Laudate, Pueri, Mendelssohn’s motet for women’s voices, and two opera choruses by Handel. Also featured will be works by composers Bob Chilcott and David Brunner, as well as holiday music including the popular Norman Luboff arrangement of the Austrian carol Still, Still, Still. As ever, we will celebrate the joys of the winter season and honor the traditions of Christmas and Chanukah while anticipating the renewal and promise of the new year.

The festivities continue in May, 2010 at the Williamsburg Regional Library Theater, where we will present our spring concert, DREAMS FROM A RIVER, SONGS FROM THE SEA, featuring the premiere of the second movement of Godspeed, a vocal poem for women’s voices commissioned by the Chorus. We are thrilled to welcome back composer Deen Entsminger, who conducted the work’s 2007 premiere in Williamsburg, and will return to conduct its newest installment. Sharing the baton with Maestro Entsminger, I will lead the Chorus in Gustav Holst’s Hymns of the Rig Veda, whose other-worldly vocal harmonies and harp accompaniment are believed by some to be the most exquisite music ever written for female voices. Going with the flow of our water theme, we will also perform Gwyneth Walker’s arrangement of the beloved Peace, I Ask of Thee, Oh River, followed by some whimsical Canadian tunes celebrating the glories of its waterways (and watermen, in one exuberant case).

If you’d like to sing with us, please contact me, Ann Porter, at 757-565-7875 or aportermusic@verizon.net. We’ll meet for our first rehearsal of the fall season on Thursday morning, September 10th, 2009 at King of Glory Lutheran Church on Longhill Road.

Finally, we offer heartfelt thanks to everyone who supports the Chorus by donating time and money and attending our concerts. Thank you for your generosity and making it possible for us to make music together. We look forward to seeing you in the audience next season!