Voices of the Earth

The Program
In the Beginning | Aaron Copland
Come to the Woods | Jake Runestad
Earth Song | Frank Ticheli
Mid-Winter Songs | Morten Lauridsen
Music of Stillness | Elaine Hagenberg

What's Interesting 

• ​​And it was good!: Aaron Copland's In the Beginning has been chosen for Artistic Director Jonathan Laabs's first concert leading Bel Canto Chorus. ​
• Midwinter Songs, commissioned by the University of Southern California to celebrate its centennial, was composed by USC professor Morten Lauridsen. Lauridsen, an avid poetry lover, chose to set texts by English poet Robert Graves. Read the texts here!
• Frank Ticheli's Earth Song "sprang out of an intense weariness of war and a wish for peace." Ticheli wrote the text of the piece, which he called not only a poem, but "a prayer, a plea, a wish."
• ​Jake Runstad's Come into the Woods features settings of poems by Scottish-American, Wisconsin-raised conservationist and naturalist John Muir, who helped preserve the Yosemite Valley and Sequoia National Park.