The auditioned mid-coast a cappella vocal ensemble VoXX: Voice of Twenty, led by Music Director John Mehrmann, is pleased to offer its summer concert series. Bright Mornings, Sweet Nights: A musical journey through the day, will be presented in four venues in late June.

We are living through times that feel chaotic, confusing, frightening for some, uncertain for most. VoXX hopes that this program – with its reminder that no matter what, each day progresses from sunrise to sunset to nightfall and then begins anew – can offer some brightness and comfort, and moments of hopefulness and peace. In this program, we offer sacred and secular works in English, Latin, German, and Welsh, that progress through the day from the rising sun to peaceful dreams.

The program begins at daybreak, with the Gaelic hymn Morning has Broken, followed by Bach’s beautiful chorale, Break forth, O beauteous heavenly light, and Burleigh’s arrangement of the spiritual, My Lord, What a Mornin’. We then move into the full light of day, with You Are the New Day by John David of the rock group the Airwaves, My Spirit Sang All Day by Gerald Finzi, and a vocal arrangement of contemporary composer Max Richter’s string quintet, On the Nature of Daylight.

The program then honors VoXX’s early music origins with Palestrina’s Sicut Cervus – a piece evoking early evening, when the stag comes to the stream to drink (“As a deer longs for springs of water, So longs my soul for thee, O God.”). Next is Abendlied (Evening Song) by 19th-century composer Josef Rheinberger, Draw On, Sweet Night, by 17th-century composer John Wilbye, and Bach’s Gute Nacht, o Wesen (Good night, existence), performed by a solo quartet.

We return to the Renaissance with Josquin’s Salve Regina, evoking the hope of mercy and eternal light, and then to the familiar Evening Prayer from Humperdinck’s opera Hansel and Gretel, and Palestrina’s Exsultate Deo, with its joyful call to “blow the trumpet in the new moon.”

The program ends, fittingly, on a peaceful note, with the Welsh hymn Ar Hyd y Nos, familiar to many as the lullaby All Through the Night.

VoXX will present Bright Mornings, Sweet Nights four times:

Saturday, June 21 at 7:30 pm
Hammer Hall at Bay Chamber
5 Mountain Street, Camden

Sunday, June 22 at 4:00 pm
The Waldo Theatre
916 Main Street, Waldoboro

Saturday, June 28 at 7:30 pm
Unitarian Universalist Church of Belfast
37 Miller Street, Belfast

Sunday, June 29 at 4:00 pm
Old South Cushing Meeting House
Salt Pond Road, Cushing