A Celebration of the Music Makers
With Gwyneth Walker and Friends

Braintree resident and nationally recognized choral composer, Gwyneth Walker, will celebrate her 60^th birthday and Chandler Music Hall’s 100^th with a gift of two days of music making with her musician friends at Chandler in Randolph. The birthday festivities begin Saturday, Oct. 13 and continue Sunday, Oct. 14.

The award-winning Vermont composer is the creator of more than 170 commissioned works to date and is among the most sought after choral music composers in the country. Musicians will travel from as far as Oklahoma, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, along with 12 choruses from towns in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, to participate in the celebration of Walker's musical legacy.

Saturday’s events begin at 3 p.m. with a vocal recital featuring three world premieres composed for the occasion and performed by local friends Marjorie Drysdale, Maria Lamson, and Marta Borgstrom, and soprano Denise Walker and pianist Estrid Eklof, both of Connecticut.

At 4 p.m. Chicago soprano Michelle Areyzaga and pianist Jamie Shaak will perform vocal and piano compositions from their CD of Walker’s music, "The Sun Is Love."

A reception will be held at 5:30 and then the concert resumes at 7 p.m. with folk song arrangements of "Buffalo Gals" scored for clarinet and piano, performed by clarinetist Mary Ellen Miller of Hartford, Conn. and pianist Maureen Burford of Thetford. The final works on the program are chamber pieces for violin, cello, and piano, performed by Trio Tulsa, composed of University of Tulsa faculty members, violinist Maureen O'Boyle, cellist Diane Bucchianeri, and pianist Anna Norberg. The Saturday performances are offered free of charge.

The celebration continues with a choral festival at Chandler Sunday beginning at 4 p.m., sponsored by the Chandler Center for the Arts in celebration of its centennial season. The choruses Bella Voce of Burlington, Cantabile of Hanover, N.H., the Colchester Community Chorus, the Concord Women's Chorus of Concord, Mass., Feminine Tone of Perkinsville, Ladies Night Out of Rutland, the Mad River Chorale of Waitsfield, Northsong of Newport, the Randolph Singers and Sounding Joy! of Randolph, and the Thetford Chamber Singers will all take the stage, bringing their favorite pieces of the extensive Walker repertoire.

The concert opens with "The Flying Trapeze—Then and Now," commissioned by Chandler Center for the Arts and featuring the Central Vermont Brass Ensemble and Ken’s Barbershop Quartet. The choral works on the program were composed by Walker from 1985-2007 and display a range of music from folk songs, spirituals, and familiar old tunes and song arrangements, to settings by such writers as Jane Kenyon and Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

A newly-commissioned work for Chandler’s centennial, "Every Life Shall Be A Song," will be performed by the assembled 12 choruses. This new music, with accompaniment by timpani and brass, will provide a stirring conclusion to this dual birthday celebration.

General admission tickets for the Sunday afternoon program are available through the Chandler box office at 728-6464 between 3-6 p.m. or at tickets@chandler-arts.org.

This performance is presented with generous support from the Vermont Arts Council, the Vermont Community Foundation, New England Foundation for the Arts, the Max Seaton Charitable Trust, and the Mascoma Savings Bank Foundation.

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