Hope 2020 is off to a good start for you. The choir restarted rehearsals this week for our next concert. And we are SO excited! We sing MUSIC, SHE WROTE, Saturday, March 14, 2020 at Providence Presbyterian Church (9019 Little River Turnpike, Fairfax, VA).
We’re looking forward to this concert for a couple of reasons.
We frequently include pieces and large works by female composers, but this is our first time programming an entire concert with music by female composers. We are doing this because we realized there is a wealth of rich history and legacy of women composers from Hildegard Von Bingen to her modern contemporaries. We want to highlight them more often, and showcase them the way we effortlessly showcase retrospectives on their male counterparts.
There are several contemporary women composers whose names should be as familiar as Glass or Whitacre or Forrest. And yet, as we’ll hear, from Alice Parker to Gwyneth Walker women composers are prolific – with an output that is marked by humor and approachability, daring to see the collective power of singing to create change. It’s a sentiment reflected in a composition from Joan Szymko, inspired by Mother Teresa’s famous words: “If we have no peace/it is because we have forgotten that/we belong to each other.” A sentiment we need now, more than ever.
As VCS artistic director Mike Horanski demonstrated last season – when both large works we performed were by contemporary women composers, one not yet 40 – it’s just a matter of finding out that “amazing” has been there all along.
It’s only fitting that we share our stage for this concert with Up All Night, a women’s barbershop quartet. Yes, women sing barbershop, too. Short version: The boys got organized in the 1930s and wouldn’t let the girls in. When they finally did, in 2018, the girls had long since built their own club and been singing barbershop the entire time. Female barbershop is just not what many people think of as the norm. But music belongs to everyone. And at VCS, we’re happy to change that level of visibility in our own way and sing outside the lines.
It’s going to be an amazing show. Please join us!
Tickets are $25/adults, $20/students (15 – 18) or seniors (65+). Youth age 14 and younger attend for free.
Tickets are on sale online at https://vcsmusicshewrote.eventbrite.com until Friday, March 13, 2020. More will be available at the door on concert night start 6:45 pm. Doors open at 7:15 pm, we sing at 7:30 pm.