St. Cecilia Chamber Choir Performs 30th Anniversary Concerts, “There Is Sweet Music Here,” on May 2 and 3 in Damariscotta

St. Cecilia Chamber Choir presents “There Is Sweet Music Here,” a concert celebrating 30 years of musicmaking, with concerts on Saturday, May 2 and Sunday, May 3, both at 3:00 p.m. at Damariscotta Baptist Church. The concerts include works by Gwyneth Walker, Ola Gjeilo, Herbert Howells, Richard Francis, Thomas Tallis and more. A professional string quartet and guitarist will join the Choir. Linda Blanchard is St. Cecilia’s artistic director, assisted by Sean Fleming on organ and piano.

The core of the program features two odes to the Choir’s namesake. Opening the program is “A Hymn for St. Cecilia,” a setting by Herbert Howells of a text by Ursula Vaughan Williams. This masterpiece of the English cathedral style was first performed at Evensong at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London on St. Cecilia’s Day in 1961.

The second setting is Richard Francis’ stirring “Hymn to St. Cecilia,” based W. H. Auden’s poem of the same name. Francis captured the vivid changes in mood of Auden’s poem; in turns playful, mystical, and majestic. Composed in 1996, this piece was Francis’s first commission for the Choir.

Also on the concert is a beautiful setting of Tennyson’s poem “There Is Sweet Music Here” by Z. Randall Stroope, and works setting the poetry of Yeats, 19th century Pulitzer Prize winning poet Leonora Spyer, and influential 20th century poet May Swenson. Gjeilo’s “The Lake Isle” for guitar and string quartet, featuring guitarist Dave Martin, Gwyneth Walker’s “I Will Be Earth,” a Magnificat setting by Stanford, Frank Ticheli’s “Earth Song,” and more.

The concerts will close with Caldwell and Ivory’s exciting tour de force “John the Revelator.”

Tickets are $20, with free admission for children and students. Tickets are available online at ceciliachoir.org, Sherman’s Maine Coast Book Shop in Damariscotta, and the door. For more information, please email , visit facebook.com/stceciliachamberchoir and ceciliachoir.org, or call 207-563-6160.