MUSIC
TO BRIGHTEN WINTER EVENINGS
Winter Solstice concert, Epiphany Lessons and Carols, and February Masterworks concert are on tap
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everal opportunities to hear beautiful music made by our choirs and instrumentalists are coming this winter at St. Stephen’s. The Winter Solstice Concert has become a wonderful tradition at St. Stephen’s Church, and this year, it By Brent te Velde will be held on the actual Solstice, Wednesday, December 21, at 7:00 p.m. Sanctuary, our Compline choir, will again offer this opportunity to pause during the busy holiday season and enjoy classic and modern a cappella music. The program will offer reflections on the themes of waning darkness and night, increasing light and day, and our preparation for the Nativity in our hearts and lives. Composers will include Eleanor Daley, Jake Runestad, Toby Hession, Kim André Arnesen, Dan Forrest, Annabel Rooney, Gabriel Jackson, Kerensa Briggs, and Peter Hallock. Sanctuary will also be joined by cellist Peter Greydanus and harpist Anastasia Jellison, performing both with the choir and on their own as a duo. We look forward to beginning 2023 with a celebration of the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6, at 6:00 p.m., with Epiphany Lessons and Carols, a service similar to Christmas Lessons and Carols, made famous by King’s College, Cambridge. This service especially celebrates the revelation of Jesus as the son of God, and the sharing of the light of Christ throughout the world. This will be reflected by the lighting of candles and through choral music by Eric Whitacre, Kathleen Allen, Alison
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Willis, Philip Stopford, and Jonathan Dove. We plan to follow the service with a parish supper and chili cook-off! We’d love to have your enter your chili in the cook-off, but even if you don’t, we hope you will still come to the service and stay for supper. Details will be communicated in the Spirit and the eSpirit, our weekly newsletters, and at ststephensRVA.org/ epiphany. This year our annual Masterworks Concert—to take place February 16, 2023, at 7:00 p.m.—will feature 20th century masterpieces. The program will begin with the only piece that American composer Charles Ives—known for revising his music throughout his life—was said to have been fully satisfied with: his setting of Psalm 90 for choir and organ. Ives vividly and powerfully explores the psalm’s text, using the capabilities of the choir and organ to their fullest extent. Sanctuary, our Compline choir, will sing, and Diana Chou will play the organ. A piece by Benjamin Britten will follow, Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac. Britten, a friend of the American composter Aaron Copland, spent time traveling in the United States. This is the second of five canticles that Britten wrote at various points in his life, and three of them were dedicated as memorials. The text for the second canticle sets the text of the Abraham and Isaac story as told in the Chester Mystery Plays, and displays Britten’s operatic genius through the intimacy of the chamber trio of piano, countertenor, and tenor. Guest artists for this piece are artists John Bitsas, countertenor, Nathan Bick, tenor, and Ingrid Keller, pianist. Ingrid plays often at our Celtic service. SEASONS OF THE SPIRIT