Like the rest of our Island community, the Island Community Chorus, with over 100 members, was getting restless and frustrated. Weekly snowstorms forced the cancellation of our Monday night rehearsals.
The Old Whaling Church was filled with harmonies this week as the 115-member Island Community Chorus practiced for its annual holiday concert, which takes place Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. This year's program features lighter fare than previous concerts, including a bouncy arrangement of Jingle Bells.
The Island Community Chorus, along with soloists and a full orchestra, last weekend completed two powerful performances of Felix Mendelssohn’s St. Paul at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School Performing Arts Center.
The Island Community Chorus raises its voices for two concerts at the Performing Arts Center at the regional high school on Saturday, April 5, at 7:30 p.m. and on Sunday, April 6, at 3 p.m.
They are teachers, plumbers, bankers, artists, fishermen, scallopers, shopkeepers, retirees and twenty-somethings. And while all of these roles are important, this weekend the key characteristic that binds this seemingly disparate group is that they sing.
Except for the baroque chirping from the rafters, the Tabernacle is empty and quiet enough to make one want to whisper. It is 40 minutes before the Island Community Chorus begins to rehearse for its July 6 summer concert. Music director Peter Boak arrives carrying a collapsible stepstool and music stand. He climbs to the stage to arrange and consider.
Caroling is all about alcohol, traditionally. “This time of year is about being with friends singing carols, and being in a pub drinking good beer,” Peter R. Boak, director of the Island Community Chorus, told his audience at a performance in the Edgartown Old Whaling Church this Sunday, making a misleading distinction.
The Island Community Chorus will open the 2008 season of programs at the Tabernacle in Oak Bluffs with a concert at 8 p.m. this Saturday, July 5.
The chorus of more than 100 voices, under the direction of Peter Boak and accompanied by L. Garrett Brown at the Tabernacle’s nine-foot Steinway piano, will present a program of music designed for the holiday weekend, music whose variety pays tribute to the richness of the American experience.
The Island Community Chorus will feature two great works from the 20th century choral repertoire in its annual spring concert, performed at 7:30 p.m. this Saturday, April 4, and again at 3 p.m. on Sunday, April 5, at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown.
Under the direction of Peter Boak and with accompanist Garrett Brown at the piano, the chorus will present Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms (1965) and Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana (1937), as well as selections from the Liebeslieder Waltzes, written by Johannes Brahms in 1868 and 1869.
G rateful Vineyarders will long remember the dazzling musical high wire act performed so superbly last weekend by Peter Boak and the inspired Island Community Chorus in their thrilling Spring 2009 concert.
