Trinity Music: What to Look Forward to This Fall

Dear Trinity Church and friends,

 

What a different and memorable week it was at Quarantine Quire Qamp! In a typical summer the Trinity Choristers and teens joyfully trek to Choir Camp at Connecticut’s Incarnation Center. Camp is the most formative experience of the year, especially with our new members – building community, singing, learning music theory, careening down the waterslide into the lake, and forging our choir for the coming year. This summer’s version, QQQ, despite the challenges and frustration of group singing on Zoom, was hearteningly successful, with 38 campers, including 5 new choristers. Our devoted, creative staff – Marissa and Colin, with staff singer coaches Nora Burgard, Sophie Michaux, Fausto Miro, and Adam Simon – built a firm musical, video/audio, and social foundation that will carry us into the new season of Zoom rehearsals and services, including Wednesday Evensongs. A trinity of shout outs to choir alums Simon Schmitt-Hall, Mark Barbone, and rising senior Carson Glew, who led games, physical activities, and were our dazzling role models. 

 

Speaking of Evensong, as of Wednesday, September 16 at 5:45 pm, the Choristers will lead and sing weekly Evensong, as they have on Wednesdays during the program year since 2009. The 2020 virtual version will be a mix of the live – singing the collects, proclaiming the scripture, chanting plainsong psalms – with pre-assembled settings of the Magnificat, Nunc Dimittis and Preces. Please join us for Evensong – one of the treasures of Anglicanism.  

 

Beginning Sunday, September 13 at 9:30 am, prior to “Worship from Home” at 9:45 am, you are invited to a Zoom “Meet the Hymn!” hosted by members of the music staff. Each week these brief sessions will explore a new hymn or selection of service music that will be incorporated into our worship. The first session will feature Hymn 529: “In Christ there is no east or west,” to the tune McKee, arranged by Harry T. Burleigh (1866-1949), a prominent Black singer/composer/arranger based in New York. 

 

One of the choir’s tasks this coming year is to confront and address systemic, structural racism in our midst and how it impacts our choir culture and community. To that end a new “Choir Inclusion and Diversity Committee” has begun work, with ten singers, a choir parent, and three music staff, under the leadership of Matthew Hutchings, all the way from Madagascar. Please pray for our work, that we may enter into it with honesty and humility. 

 

A very exciting initiative coming soon is “Sing, Trinity!” Because congregational singing is at the heart of worship, whether from Copley Square or during “Worship from Home,” our commitment to keep it lively and inclusive is a responsibility we all share. Soon we hope to engage parishioners for our weekly hymn videos that have, up to now, included only choir members and choristers. As soon as a strategy to implement this expanded element of “Worship from Home” is fully developed we will eagerly announce it to all. 

 

Blessings,

 

Richard Webster

Director of Music and Organist

 

Colin Lynch

Associate Director of Music and Organist

 

Marissa Hall

Music and Worship Administrator