The Island Community Chorus is presenting its spring concerts a day earlier than usual this year, so that some members can travel to prime viewing spots for the total solar eclipse.

The 70-voice chorus takes the stage at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown Friday, April 5 at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday, April 6 at 3 p.m. for a program that includes Antonio Vivaldi’s breathtaking Gloria and the premiere of a new cantata by chorus director Bill Peek.

Vivaldi wrote at least three choral settings of the hymn Gloria In Excelsis Deo, Mr. Peek told the Gazette, but this version from around 1715 is the best known and most popular.

“It’s glorious. It’s joyful. It’s, in places, meditative. It’s a wonderful work,” he said. “Probably a quarter or a third of the chorus have sung it before in their lives.”

A nine-piece orchestra will accompany the singers.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sinfonia, the well-known opening movement of his Cantata 156, is also on this weekend’s program along with The Trumpet Shall Sound, from George Frideric Handel’s Messiah, featuring baritone soloist David Behnke.

Island audiences also will hear a world premiere of Mr. Peek’s Soon It Is Day, a three-part cantata based on poems by two Pulitzer-winning American writers of the last century, Edna St. Vincent Millay and James Agee.

“It’s about the journey from night to day,” Mr. Peek told the Gazette.

The first movement in the cantata, Millay’s Recuerdo, may sound a distant echo for Islanders and visitors of a certain age and older.

Its opening lines, “We were very tired and we were very merry/We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry,” were painted for years on the wall of an old carriage house that still stands just before the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road meets State Road.

“Millay was talking about a ferry in New York Harbor, of course,” said Mr. Peek, whose musical setting adds uplifting harmonies to the tale of long ago.

The second movement of the cantata, reflecting the darkness before dawn, takes its lyrics from an author who’s not well known for his poetry: James Agee, whose brooding A Lullaby reflects on the saving grace of a child’s innocence amid a desperate world. Tenor Dorian Lopes will solo.

In the work’s final movement, Dawn, Mr. Peek returns to the poetry of Millay, who was both prolific and popular in her heyday before World War II.

“She would sell out concert halls to read her poetry, and they’d have to add a second show,” he said. “She was the Taylor Swift of her day.”

Tickets for the Friday night and Saturday afternoon concerts will be available at the door on the day of the shows.