Community Calendar

The Birds and The Bees draws its inspiration from Renaissance madrigals and chansons. Representing the very beginnings of a notated secular choral tradition, these pieces introduced novel compositional devices and ideas about the relationship between poetry and music. The impact of these innovations on choral and operatic music extends to the present day.

Though there are few “modern madrigals” in this program, each selection features some element of madrigalism; text painting, onomatopoeia, imitation, chromaticism, irregular phrasing, and thinly veiled eroticism. Largely a cappella, the resulting program alternates between expressions of yearning lyricism and cheeky rhythmic vitality.

Including works by Norman Dello Joio, Morton Lauridsen, Georgiann Toole, Hyo-Won Woo, Carol Nicholeris, Joshua Shank, and Christopher Hoh, The Birds and The Bees is sure to delight and move listeners with its beauty and wit, and to serve as a reminder that what is old is still new.

🎼 We are so excited to share our spring concert with you: The Earth Sings!
Why are there so many songs about rainbows? From pieces like Cloudburst by Eric Whitaker, that will keep you excited and engaged to legendary music like Make Our Garden Grow from Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, we will be celebrating the natural world around us. Celebrate with us as we usher in the beautiful Maine summer! ⛅️🌈🌧️⚡️🌼🌱

Biddeford Performing Arts Center
25 Tiger Drive in Biddeford, Maine See less

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 Theater
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

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

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. See below for dates and times.

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 Theater
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

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. See below for dates and times.

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 Theater
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