For people who need relief from recent political events, three Vermont choruses are about to deliver with their fall concerts. Burlington’s Aurora Chamber Singers will highlight joyous songs by the 18th-century Boston composer William Billings. Maiden Vermont, an a cappella women’s chorus specializing in barbershop, will open its Middlebury concerts with a familiar and ever-upbeat TV theme song. And Burlington Choral Society will sing a program centered on birds — something everyone can unify around.
Birds became a guiding musical theme for Burlington Choral Society artistic director Richard Riley after he read his female tenor Trish O’Kane’s 2024 memoir, Birding to Change the World. The resulting program, “Birds, Byrd, and Birding to Change the World,” to be performed on Saturday, November 23, at the Elley-Long Music Center in Colchester, includes the author reading excerpts from her book and may be the group’s most creative concert yet.
In music, birdsong is usually conveyed by instruments; Riley decided to use the human voice, arranging several orchestral works for chorus and 16 string players. He set Antonio Vivaldi’s violin concerto “Spring,” from The Four Seasons, to Vivaldi’s own poem (in an English translation) about the birdsong-filled season. Singers will voice the cuckoo, turtledove and finch songs usually played by the strings.
The chorus will take over the woodwinds’ birdsong in Riley’s arrangement of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “The Lark Ascending” and sing the poem of the same name that inspired it, by English Victorian poet George Meredith. The director also created choral arrangements of two instrumental works by William Byrd — an inevitable choice, given the homophone.
To round out the concert, the 50-member group will improvise whistled birdsong for two straight minutes during Latvian composer Pteris Vasks’ “Plainscapes.” Riley promised the performance will be intriguing “even if birding doesn’t happen to be your thing.”
Aurora Chamber Singers artistic director David Neiweem started seven years ago with the group, formerly known as the Oriana Singers and long led by founder Bill Metcalfe. Now it is Neiweem’s turn to retire: “Wake Every Breath,” this Saturday, November 16, at Burlington’s College Street Congregational Church, is his last concert with the chorus before he moves to the Cleveland area to be near family.
For the occasion, 34 singers and 12 string players are performing two sacred choral works that Neiweem described as “very much in our wheelhouse”: a cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Missa Brevis in F. The director also chose three songs by Billings, Mozart’s American contemporary, as a nod to the election. But not to worry: The devout, self-taught hymnist wrote without rancor.
The message of the canon “Wake Every Breath” is to “let joy and gratitude and love/ through all the notes of music rove.” Billings’ “Be Glad Then, America” (1794) tells of the Lord banishing the country’s “Pharaohs and Achans and Ahabs” — roughly, despotic rulers, thieves and moral corrupters. According to Neiweem, the song moves “from darkness to light” in “the new American spirit” of the era.
“We wanted our community to come back together peacefully, no matter what the outcome was.” Tim Guiles
Led by Tim Guiles, Maiden Vermont, now in its 20th year, is dedicating its two Middlebury Town Hall Theater concerts this weekend to Maiden’s founding director, Ripton resident Lindi Bortney, who died in May. Guiles, who knew Bortney for 15 years, said the chorus has always valued “sisterhood.” Its 30 current members drive to rehearsals in Salisbury from as far away as Colchester and Middletown Springs.
“The Maiden Show!” features 17 tunes ranging from pop music, jazz standards and movie themes to traditional barbershop arrangements. Two are choreographed, including the opening piece: a barbershop arrangement of the theme song from “The Muppet Show.” Guiles, a music director in local theater productions, will introduce the concert much as Kermit the Frog did the TV show: by popping through a cutout sign.
The program runs the gamut of emotions. “Prayer of the Children” addresses war-torn countries; “Stormy Weather,” a classic jazz standard, is about grief and loss. Plenty of songs are intended to be unifiers.
“We’ll be singing shortly after the elections,” Guiles said last week. “We wanted our community to come back together peacefully no matter what the outcome was.” In that vein, Maiden is performing the pop peace anthem “Just Sing” from the animated movie Trolls World Tour. “Forget everything; just sing like it’s what we’ve been missing,” the lyrics go. Hear, hear.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Lift Every Voice | Three Vermont choruses offer respite from politics in their fall concerts”
This article appears in The Winter Preview Issue 2024.
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