Two choirs will combine their voices to observe the First Sunday in Lent this Sunday, Feb. 22, at 5 p.m. at Grace Episcopal Church in Lexington.
The Chamber Singers, the choral ensemble of Southern Virginia University, will join with the choir of Grace Church in the service of Choral Evensong.
The two choirs will sing various parts of the service, such as two venerable works from the English tradition: an evening hymn by the 16th century Renaissance composer Thomas Tallis (with the congregation joining in); and canticles of Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis from the Victorian era by Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. Various other compositions, several offered by the Chamber Singers, come from living composers.
Leading the choral music will be SVU’s new director of choral activities, Dr. Benjamin Gaughran, with Grace Church’s director of music, Martha Burford, at the organ. Other instrumentalists include Kamryn Bradshaw-Meyer, pianist, and Christy Schucker, horn.
The Rev. David Cox, who is affiliated with Grace Church and also with SVU as a professor of history, will officiate and preach.
The choir of Grace Church includes not only parishioners but also students from Washington and Lee and from Southern Virginia.
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. They, like other musical groups at SVU, have often performed in Grace Church.
