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Southern Virginia University’s premier choral group, the Chamber Singers, will offer a concert and Choral Evensong this Sunday, Feb. 23, at 7 p.m. at Grace Episcopal Church Lexington.
The program, latest in an annual series entitled “Expressions of Faith,” explores the ecclesiastical and monastic traditions of the Anglican Communion in “The Liturgy of the Hours” through psalms, hymns, and anthems performed in concert form and as part of an evening service of worship.
Highlighting the first portion of the program will be works by 20th and 21st century British and American composers such as William Walton, Aaron Copland, and the contemporary composer James McMillan. It will include the world premiere of a piece by Julia Evans, a 2024 alumna of SVU.
Led by SVU’s interim director of choral activities, Jonathan Clawson, a 2021 alumnus, the chorus will be accompanied by Patrick Ritsch, who is director of choral activities at Kentucky Wesleyan College and minister of music at First Presbyterian Church of Owensboro, Ky.
Following a brief intermission, the choir will return for the service of Choral Evensong, long considered one of the treasures of the Anglican Communion. In observing the Feast of Saint Matthias the Apostle, the Chamber Singers will offer several masterpieces of the English tradition including, as canticles, the Gloucester Service by Herbert Howells, and the anthem Te lucis ante terminum (“To thee before the close of day”) by Henry Balfour Gardiner.
The Rev. David Cox, who is professor of history at SVU, will preside.
SVU’s Chamber Singers have performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City in 2019, at the Virginia Music Education Association in 2022, and on a regular basis at the visitors’ center of the temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Washington, D.C.
