GUILFORD — For the past several years, Friends of Music at Guilford, now in its 47th season, has been presenting an “A Cappella à la Carte” evening as the finale to its annual calendar. This year, the Guilford Chamber Singers are featured in “Melodies Steal Into My Heart,” the musical segment of the evening's three-part menu.
The setting is Guilford Community Church. The date is Saturday, June 8, beginning at 6 p.m. with a brief and merry Friends of Music membership meeting.
On the agenda: electing next year's board of trustees and symbolically ratifying the current board's actions in the fiscal year just ending. Plans for the 48th annual season of concerts will be shared.
At 6:30 p.m. add your dish to an all-community potluck. Hors d'oeuvres, salads, side dishes, and entrées of all kinds make for an eclectic, often multinational meal. An assortment of warm-weather beverages is supplied. Desserts are reserved for a post-concert reception.
At 7:30 p.m., the diners and others coming just for the music converge on the church's sanctuary for an hour-long concert. The 16-voice Guilford Chamber Singers present what director Tom Baehr describes as “a little of this, a little of that, from the 17th, 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.” English madrigals and part-songs are presented alongside compositions from Canada, Czechoslovakia, and the United States, and a classic from the Great American Songbook.
The lyrics range from Psalm 23 and the Song of Solomon to works by Shakespeare's contemporary Christopher Marlowe; several Thomases, including mssrs. Campion, Morley, Ford and Moore; John Dowland, Orlando Gibbons, and Alfred Lord Tennyson; as well as Adrienne Jones and the prolific Johnny Mercer.
The composers include familiar names such as Edward Elgar, Hoagy Carmichael, and Antonin Dvorak, but also part-song composers whose initial fame has been dimmed by the passing years: William Sterndale Bennett, Charles Villiers Stanford, and Healey Willan.
The program is a veritable smorgasbord, to continue the food theme, and a potluck dessert reception caps the evening.
The public is invited to attend one, two, or all three of the evening's “menu” items. Guilford Community Church, which is handicap accessible, is at 38 Church Dr. in the Algiers village of Guilford. Pass the Guilford Country Store on Route 5 heading south, take the first left on Bee Barn Road, and another left on Church Drive.
Admission is free, with donations encouraged to support the Friends of Music organization, which offers its core annual programs on a donations-only basis and provides community outreach programs for both the Guilford Central School and area seniors.