A celebration of love in all forms, this concert
featured a second performance of our
last-commissioned
work, Lana Walter's Welcome Love. The four a cappella
settings of 17th-century love poems were a chorus favorite
from the moment we began preparing them for their premiere
in 2004. "She treats us like grownups," was the
response from many singers to Ms. Walter's user-friendly but
never trivial vocal writing for all parts.
This concert
featured Amy Beach's The Chambered
Nautilus, a major work with lush, impressionistic harmonies
we first performed in 2000. Its text, by Oliver Wendell Holmes,
challenges the listener to summon the courage to grow and
change. We also premiered a new work by Eleanor Epstein.
Funded by a major gift from the Gidwitz family in honor of
President Sue's bat mitzvah, these newly-commissioned arrangements
of Hebrew songs will make a significant contribution
to the repertoire of Jewish music for women's voices
