Events

Rutland Area Chorus Spring Concert

May 3, 2026 at 4:00 pm

Sanctuary

The Rutland Area Chorus and Grace Festival Wind Quintet with Amy Frostman (soloist) and Marc Whitman (marimba) offer a concert of seascape-inspired music on Sunday, May 3 at 4 pm.  The concert includes “Three Sea Shanties” by Malcolm Arnold, songs by Roger Quilter and Dustin Schulze and the Vermont premiere of “Between Blue Mirrors” by Alastair Stout.

“Between Blue Mirrors,” a musical celebration of the sea, ships and sailors, is a setting of a dramatic text by Jonathan Lennie.

The work was commissioned by the Shetland Choral Society for a concert given during the Cutty Sark Tall Ship’s Race, which came to the UK’s most northerly group of islands in May 1999.

The work is scored for SATB, piano, violin and ocean drum which follow a Tall Ship’s battle with flowing streams, raging storms and navigating calm, mysterious waters. The sea and its nature are vividly depicted from sea gulls and salt spray to corals and fathoms down through swirling currents, the dark depths and secrets of the ocean floor.

After the central point of the work, ‘A ship’s bell tolls the missing hours of vanished souls,’ Lennie weaves together previous images forming a surreal, fantastic seascape. A collage of main musical themes accompanies this fragmented memory until the dream ship’s mast impales the very sky itself and is dragged over the blue horizon into the ‘sea’ of the cosmos.

As the work ends, the listener is audibly ‘dusted in carbon of slow-burning stars,’ which fades like the quiet hush of the ebbing tide over pebbles.

Free-willing offerings are greatly appreciated for this free public event.

Alastair interviewed about "Between Blue Mirrors"