“Today” and “tonight” signify Friday, May 1.
What do you love?
A small flock of women will answer that question — in song — tonight in Port Townsend and Monday night in Port Angeles.
“I Carry Your Heart with Me,” “Gentle Nature,” “The Lake Isle Innisfree,” “Food, Glorious Food” and “How Can I Keep from Singing?” are all on the set list. The 21-voice NorthWest Women’s Chorale’s spring concerts are unabashed celebrations of the many kinds of love.
“This one is so fun . . . [it] has kind of a crazy mix,” alto Vicki Corson said of the program, to fill Trinity United Methodist Church, 609 Taylor St., Port Townsend, at 7 this evening and then Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, 301 E. Lopez Ave., Port Angeles, on Monday, also at 7 p.m.
Admission to either performance is a suggested $15 donation, and would-be concert-goers can find out more by phoning chorale director Joy Lingerfelt at 360-457-9306.
The women’s chorale’s motto, added soprano MarySue French, is “singing harmony into our lives.”
And so the group has invited other singers from across the Olympic Peninsula: the 35-voice Rainshadow Chorale will join in tonight’s concert and Bella Voce, a women’s ensemble from Port Angeles High School, will sing Monday night.
Rainshadow’s set will include Carly Simon’s “Let the River Run” and two poems set to music: John Keats’ “Weep No More” and Sara Teasdale’s “Stars I Shall Find.”
As for Bella Voce, the 17-woman choir will, along with director Jolene Dalton Gailey, offer some of the songs they sang in the April Heritage Festival competition in New York City.
These include “Lift Thine Eyes” by Felix Mendelssohn, “I Am Not Yours” by Eric William Barnum and Donald Patriquin’s “Ah! Si Mon Moine Voulait Danser.”
Oh, and the Bellas will also bring Carole King’s “I Feel the Earth Move Under My Feet.”
The chorale sings not with an accompanist but with a collaborative pianist: Kristin Quigley Brye, the musician, teacher and conductor known for her work with the Port Angeles Symphony and in local theater productions. She’ll be music director of “A Chorus Line” at Peninsula College in June.
Another collaborator is Rebekah Cadorette, who provides sign language interpretation at the chorale’s performances.
“This year, we have some of the best comradeship we’ve had,” said Corson, who is in her third season with the ensemble.
“I love the challenge of the repertoire that Joy selects. It always stretches my thinking, my everything.”
Both Corson and French tout the variety of women around them.
“Everybody comes from a different point in their lives,” French said.
They meet for rehearsal every Monday night, after working at Olympic Medical Center, at the Port Angeles Library or, in French’s case, at the Nippon Paper Industries USA mill.
When they get to singing, they forget about everything else — everything except one another.
“It is always a privilege to work with these gals,” said Lingerfelt.
“They are like a crayon box full of jewel tones.”
