Vocal Arts Ensemble: Sure on This Shining Night

Tickets: $10, available at Duke Box Office or at the door

Vocal Arts Ensemble’s 23rd annual summer concert features gorgeous choral music that moves gradually from dusk, through darkness, to dawn. The moon and stars are portrayed in their luminous beauty, evoking wonder and a sense of the infinite. The night brings rest and sleep and dreams.

Poetry by Sara Teasdale is sensitively set to music by Dale Warland and Eriks Ešenvalds, the latter with the added accompaniment of tuned water glasses. James Agee’s poem “Sure on This Shining Night” is heard in Morten Lauridsen’s rich harmonic language, and an excerpt from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is heard in a playful setting by Carrie Mallonee. Words by Dryden, O’Shaughnessy, and even a Sanskrit text from 1200 BC are also heard in sensitive, expressive musical settings.

Many of the pieces in this concert—ones by Clausen, Stroope, Gjeilo, Grieg, Elder, and others–are full of color and atmosphere and mystery. By contrast, Eric Whitacre’s “Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine” provides an extended, virtuosic look at da Vinci’s imagination and motivation in creating his famous flying machine, and imagines, through a panoply of vocal sounds, da Vinci’s vision of how this first flight might feel.

We invite you to come and hear all of this beautiful music!
Concert repertoire:
 
René Clausen  – Tonight eternity alone
Hugo Alfvén, arr. – Glimmering Moonlight
Dale Warland – There will be rest
Z. Randall Stroope – Noche serena
Daniel Elder – Ballade to the Moon (Nocturne)
Eric Nelson – We are the music makers
Eric Whitacre  – Leonardo dreams of his flying machine
      
Edward Grieg  – Ave maris stella
Morten Lauridsen – Sure on this shining night (fr. Nocturnes)
Eriks Ešenvalds  – Stars
Caroline Mallonee  – Look, love (fr. Songs of the Earth and Heavens)
Ola Gjeilo  – The Spheres (fr. Sunrise Mass)
Homer Keller  – Salutation of the Dawn
Carol Barnett  – Musica, Dei donum optimi

with David Heid (piano) and Philip Snyder (flute)
Rodney Wynkoop, conductor