If you’ve bought tickets to our next concert, not only will you be hearing a wonderful collection of music in Us Together (7:30 pm, Saturday, March 9, 2019 at Providence Presbyterian Church, 9019 Little River Turnpike, Fairfax, VA), it also gives us great pleasure say that you will be at a “first”!

As it turns out, VCS is the first choral group to perform the highlight of the evening, Cecilia McDowall’s Everyday Wonders: The Girl From Aleppo in the US. We could not be more pleased by this turn of events!

In a town full of some amazing choirs, VCS has always been the unique teaching choir that sings tradition with a twist – everything from Bach to the Beatles, sometimes in the same concert. And we’re increasingly known for singing new works, and for good reason.

In the last three seasons, we’ve done five large works, all by living composers – Sydney Guillaume, John Rutter, Dan Forrest, and Sarah Quartell. This season alone, both the large works performed are by women – still a notable fact in the choral and classical world. And yet, we took ourselves by surprise by being the first in the US to perform Everyday Wonders. We didn’t go looking for that distinction. It sort of just happened because it is now in keeping with our musical DNA to seek and perform what is steeped in tradition but also new.

Part of it is you, our audience. We know we can try something new or be a first because you’re game for what we’re going to present – even if we’re singing outside the box or coloring outside the sheet music. We know that VCS continues to extend the musical horizon because you will go there with us. And for that we could not be more grateful.

The music for this concert is lovely from start to finish, ranging from simple to complex – both in sentiment and composition. It is about new beginnings and community at a time when both have never been more important. And it is going to be a piece of choral history.

We can’t wait to be in the room where it happens.

Tickets are on sale now. Do you have yours yet? Tickets are $25/adults, $20/seniors (65+) and students (15 – 18). Youth aged 14 and younger attend for free when accompanied by a paying ticket holder.

Please do join us!

The poet Warsan Shire writes, “no one leaves home unless/home is the mouth of a shark.”

Intellectually, everyone gets what that means. However leaving is the default, especially for many in the area. Many of us have been in the DC area forever. But just as many are a microcosm of our country, recent arrivals of every stripe. We’re immigrants, diplomats, international students, expats, corporate relocatees, servicemembers on temporary assignments. We’re people who either looked past the horizon and thought, “it can be more” or we got lucky, and more is already at our doorstep.

So what does it take to leave? What does it mean to belong? What awaits us in new communities?

There are permanent losses. Cultural heritages destroyed and the painful uprooting of generations. The dinner table that never somehow tastes the same, no matter how full. The swear words in Hollywood English that don’t make our ears burn quite as red. As, Nujeen Mustafa, the heroine of Everyday Wonders, the central piece of this concert’s repertoire once put it, “I’m not a number, I didn’t come here because I wanted to, I had to.”

But there are also, hopefully, immense joys if we are lucky enough to reach safe refuge or simply find our tribe anew. The opportunity and different expectations of a fresh start. A wider circle of friends and experiences. Freedom where, as Nujeen says “different is not dangerous.” And sometimes, the satisfaction of entirely new swear words that absolutely do the job.

Amid it all is the chance to be whole again. As Brian Tate’s joyful Connected puts it, “I’m over here, and you’re over there, but there’s something between us that’s greater than air.” It’s a thought to hold on to, and look forward to, no matter where we are.

Community — whether inherited or built from scratch — is a leap of faith. Take the leap with us. Come hear us sing about us, together.

Tickets are $25/adults, $20/seniors (65+) and students (15 – 18). Youth aged 14 and younger attend for free when accompanied by a paying ticket holder.

Please do join us! Tickets are on sale now.

Ask singers why VCS is a part of their week and one of the frequent answers is “community.” In an area where work, travel, and distance can underline the lack of it, community becomes ever more important. And it goes to the heart of our next concert, Us, Together, which features repertoire that recognizes and celebrates the ties that bind us.

There will be joyful music to be had from choral favorites such as Jim Papoulis and Brian Tate. But we are especially looking forward to presenting Everyday Wonders: The Girl from Aleppo — a new work with specially written text by poet Kevin Crossley-Holland set to music by Cecilia McDowall. It tells the story of Nujeen Mustafa, a Kurdish refugee who made the journey from Syria to Germany — in a wheelchair, because she also happens to have cerebral palsy.

When Everyday Wonders popped up on the radar, there was no doubt we’d sing it. It is an acknowledgment of the biggest refugee and humanitarian crisis of our time, and the difference community makes, however you define the word. It is also a reminder that music still has the power to express what words cannot describe, and bring us together.

Sung in five movements, Everyday Wonders conveys the immediacy of loss and the enormity of another world, all while reminding us of the humanity of what is at stake. In this case — home, a permanently lost cultural patrimony, the struggle to be more than a number in the system, the fight to retain hope and humor when you’re a stranger in a strange land, and finally, the everyday wonders of a new home. In a way, despite its international cast of characters, Everyday Wonders is a very American story of moving, striving, and finding community in a new world.

This is music for any of us, and all of us.

Please join VCS for Us, Together, 7:30 pm, Saturday, March 9 at Providence Presbyterian Church. Tickets are on sale now.