PORT ANGELES — In one rare evening, two chorales will offer music from North America to Africa, and from the pens of Aaron Copland, George Shearing and Shakespeare.
It’s an occasion when 64 singers from across the North Olympic Peninsula meet: Port Townsend’s RainShadow Chorale will join the NorthWest Women’s Chorale, a group of singers from Port Angeles and Sequim, for a 7 p.m. concert this Friday at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, 301 E. Lopez Ave. Tickets are $15 at the door.
RainShadow’s part of the evening is a piece called “This Shining Night,” after the James Agee poem “Sure on This Shining Night,” set to music by Washington state native Morten Lauridsen.
The chorale’s 40 singers, with director Rebecca Rottsolk, will also offer the “Songs and Sonnets of Shakespeare,” composed by Shearing, as well as music by Copland and the Canadian composer Srul Irving Glick.
‘So much color’
“I love this program because there’s so much color in it,” Rottsolk said, adding that Friday night’s songs travel from classical to jazz and back again.
The 24-voice NorthWest Women’s Chorale’s offerings will include Felix Mendelssohn’s “On Wings of Song,” the spiritual “A City Called Heaven” and “Famine Song,” inspired by stories of Sudanese basket weavers during the famine of the 1980s.
The choruses will then get together to sing Richard Nance’s “Set Me as a Seal,” featuring NorthWest Women’s Chorale accompanist Kristin Quigley Brye playing French horn.
Joy Lingerfelt, director of the women’s chorale, pronounced herself “thrilled” to collaborate with Rottsolk.
“Her professionalism,” Lingerfelt said, “brings us all up to a new level.”
To learn more about the Port Townsend-based ensemble, visit www.RainShadowChorale.org, and for information about the NorthWest Women’s Chorale, visit www.NWWomensChorale.org.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
