Page 4 - Summer Program_06-2019

A UDITIONS

We have openings for experienced singers in all voice parts, and we welcome new
members. Many members have joined after hearing one of our concerts! We perform
significant works of secular and sacred choral music, and, among other things, we are
working toward a performance of portions of Handel’s Messiah in December 2020.
We rehearse on Mondays, 7-9:30 pm, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 1924 Trinity Ave.,
Walnut Creek, resuming Monday, August 26, 2019. Contact us at info@dcachorus.org to
schedule an audition, and follow us on Facebook at Diablo Choral Artists!

FROM THE DIRE C T OR

Welcome to this final concert of our 26th Season! It is with great pleasure that we
present this concert as a celebration of nature and the joy of life itself. Some of the works
on this program blend texts with music to convey the wonders of the natural world and
their capacity to bring us peace. Wendell Berry’s poem, “The Peace of Wild Things,”
exquisitely describes how, when he “come[s] into the peace of wild things[,] . . . I rest
in the grace of the world, and am free.” Other texts combine with music to impart the
exhilaration of life, as Gabriel Navar declares in Portones abiertos y rostros brillantes,
“I have never been more excited to be alive[.]” Still others focus on the journey of
growth, death, and rebirth, as Charles Anthony Silvestri does in recounting the story of
the phoenix in “Across the Vast Eternal Sky.” Several of the texts are by famous writers,
including James Agee, Robert Frost, and Rudyard Kipling, so I particularly recommend
you read the program notes to appreciate their works as poetry, as well as song. We ask
you to join us in enjoying this music’s celebration of the life that abounds in the natural
world along with the abundant richness of human life. We conceived this concert as an
ode to the overwhelming beauty of life itself and a beckoning for each of us to become,
as Gabriel Navar says in Portones abiertos, “in one state of being completely open” to the
abundance that is all around us. In that state, we ask ourselves and one another, “How
can I keep from singing?” And so we sing.
Mark Tuning

AMERICAN CHORAL DIRECTORS ASSOCIATION (ACDA) ADVOCACY RESOLUTION
Whereas, the human spirit is elevated to a broader understanding of itself through the study and
performance in the aesthetic arts; and Whereas, serious cutbacks in funding and support have
steadily eroded state institutions and their programs throughout the country; Be it resolved that
all citizens of the United States actively voice their affirmative and collective support for necessary
funding at the local, state, and national levels of education and government, to ensure the survival
of arts programs.
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