2023

 Does Planet Earth need our songs?  “Not really,” says Nym Cooke, Music Director of the chorus Wings of Song.  “But she certainly needs our help, and singing can be a way of broadcasting that need.”

Wings of Song, centered in Sturbridge, draws its 40 singers from a wide swath of south-central Massachusetts and northeastern Connecticut.  Cooke and many of his singers are concerned about what we’re doing to our one and only home, and feel that the time has come to speak out—to sing out!—then take concerted, joyous action to make things better.

Wings of Song’s Spring program is named “Blue Boat Home” after a song by Peter Mayer that celebrates the Earth.  There will be three performances: at St. Joachim Chapel, part of St. Anne/St. Patrick Parish in Fiskdale, on Saturday, May 13th at 7:30pm; at the First Congregational Church on the Common in Woodstock, Connecticut, on Saturday, May 20th at 7:30pm; and in the auditorium of the Shepherd Hill Regional High School in Dudley, on Sunday, May 21st at 3pm.  The concerts are free, with a freewill offering collected at intermission.  All venues are handicap accessible, and refreshments will be served after each concert.  

A glance at the program’s running order shows its tremendous variety.  Take just the first four numbers.  The show begins with a projected image of the Earth as photographed by Voyager 1 from 3.7 billion miles away, and Carl Sagan’s poetic reflections on that image.  This is followed by a prayer to “Mother Earth” by Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh.  “Wake Up!” by Wings of Song soprano Donna Dufresne is next: an exhortation to us all to “be the Earth’s voice” and “make a mighty noise.”  And then comes Mayer’s “Blue Boat Home,” with its refrain “The wide universe is the ocean I travel, And the Earth is my blue boat home.”  

And so it goes—a carefully-woven quilt of choral numbers, vocal solos, readings, instrumental solos (including Oxford’s Tim Loftus playing a Native American style flute), audience singalongs, and projected images.  Songwriters include Pete Seeger, John Lennon, Leonard Bernstein, Wings of Song’s own Terry McGinty, Neil Young, Marvin Gaye, J. S. Bach, Elton John, and Jean Ritchie.  

A special feature of the May 21st performance will be opening remarks by Melissa Hoffer, Massachusetts’s first-ever “Climate Chief.”   The chorus will donate a portion of its audience’s freewill offerings to an organization working to slow down and eventually stop and reverse climate change.

People are advised to arrive a little early to be sure of a seat—and, if the first two concerts turn out to be standing room only, it’s probably a safe bet to come to the 800-seat Shepherd Hill auditorium on May 21st.  All Wings of Song members are working hard to put the finishing touches on their large and exciting program.  “This is our most elaborate and wide-ranging program ever,” says Cooke.  “And the planet—our Blue Boat Home—deserves nothing less.”