Night and Day

The spring program includes works by J. S. Bach, Johannes Brahms, William Bradley Roberts, Eric Whitacre, Cole Porter, Waller & Brooks, George & Ira Gershwin and Jerome Kern.

Images of night and day have long inspired poets and the art and popular music composers who set their texts. This concert juxtaposes colorful works by a variety of classical composers with choral arrangements of signature pieces by a few of the great American "art song" composers of the 1930's and 40's.

The fall program includes works by Arvo Pärt, Veljo Tormis, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Jaako Mäntyjärvi, plus the premiere of "I Am in Need of Music" by William Roberts, a work recently commissioned by the James River Singers in honor of long-time singer and Board member Sharon Peebles Manson.

The countries clustered around the Baltic Sea are as different from one another as the various lands and histories that stretch away behind them in numerous directions. One striking similarity among them, however, is their amazingly rich choral traditions, with which those of us in the West have only become acquainted since the dissolution of the Soviet Empire. The James River Singers will bring to you the sounds, colors and flavors of the Baltic region through choral works by a few of its most significant composers.