2025

Capping a three-year exploration on the theme of HOME, local community  chorus Wings of Song comes home once again with a pair of probing, moving concerts on  Saturday and Sunday, May 17th and 18th. 

In 2023, the chorus sang of Planet Earth, our “Blue Boat Home” in the Universe. The following  year, “Rough Seas, Safe Harbor” explored what it meant to be far from home for one or two  years at a time, then to return. In 2025, it’s time for “Here Is My Home,” a deep dive into what  home has meant to Americans and to people around the world over the years. 

Home, for many of us, is our only real sanctuary, our safe harbor, the place where we can be  most fully ourselves, the place where all our beloved stuff is, the place where we’re with the  ones we love, the place where we prepare and share meals, the place we’re proud to welcome  our friends into. Readers of this article will surely recognize the blessed feeling, after days or  weeks of traveling, of coming home—home to your one’s place.  

In “Here Is My Home,” Wings of Song will sing about yearning for home, waiting to finally go  home, savoring the comforts and consolations of home, being welcomed home, the call of  home, cherishing our planetary home, home as community, home as various forms of  communal expression such as music, a home “on God’s celestial shore,” having one’s home  taken away by invasion or by a governmental directive, home as a particular beloved  geographical region, home as reunion with those we love best. The program won’t touch on all the meanings of home—but it’ll make a good start! 

As always, there will be audience singalongs, including the concerts’ theme song “Here Is My  Home,” and also “Home, Sweet Home,” easily the most popular American song of the 1800s. A  follow-up article will profile many of the songs the chorus will be singing. Expect tremendous variety, including some fine instrumental accompaniment. 

On Saturday, May 17th at 7:30pm, the chorus will perform at St. Joachim Chapel, part of St.  Anne – St. Patrick Parish, at 16 Church Street in Fiskdale (Sturbridge), MA. The next day,  Sunday the 18th, the concert will take place at 3pm at Elm Street Congregational Church, 61 Elm  Street, Southbridge, MA. Admission to both concerts is free, with a freewill offering collected  around intermission time. Yummy free refreshments will be served after each concert. Both  concert venues are handicap-accessible. Arrive early to be sure of a seat; doors open fifteen minutes before each concert.

The community chorus Wings of Song offers a program of songs for Christmas and the Winter Solstice in two upcoming concerts. The first, Saturday, December 13 at 7:30pm, will be presented at St. Joachim Chapel, part of St. Anne – St. Patrick Parish, 16 Church Street, Fiskdale (Sturbridge), Mass. The second is Sunday, December 14 at 3pm, at Elm Street Congregational Church, 61 Elm Street, Southbridge. Both concerts are free, with a freewill offering collected at intermission. The venues are fully handicap-accessible. As always, free refreshments will be served after each concert. Folks are encouraged to arrive early to be sure of a seat.

Over his two decades as Wings of Song Music Director, Nym Cooke has introduced the chorus and its audiences to a wide variety of music. This program is no exception. Pieces come from places as far apart as Denmark and South Africa. Musical styles range from French Baroque opera to white gospel. Featured instruments include handbells, djembe, and upright bass. Compositional dates stretch from the early 1500s (composer: King Henry VIII of England) to 2025 (composer: Wings of Song tenor Gianni Davilli). Moods vary, from deeply peaceful to ferocious.  Familiarity ranges from widespread (classic Christmas songs such as “O Little Town of Bethlehem”) to nonexistent (two world premieres). Pieces last less than a minute to over five minutes. Vocal range spans almost four octaves. Musical textures range from highly contrapuntal (rounds such as “This Longest Night” and “Full Moonlight Dance”) to grandly homophonic (the ever-popular “O Holy Night,” in John Rutter’s magnificent arrangement).

The interlocking themes of night, moon, and stars proved to be enormously rich: many wonderful texts and pieces of music have been written to celebrate the mystery of darkness, or to bring spiritual light and uplift at the darkest time of the year. People are strongly encouraged to bring stars or moons to these concerts, to be held or hoisted aloft at key points in the proceedings. (More than one moon is fine, in the spirit of celebration.)

Nym waxes enthusiastic about the chorus: “One of the many good things about this group is that we are becoming more and more a collaborative enterprise. Rather than me saying, ‘This is how this piece should go’ and that’s it, I start things off and then chorus members come up with all sorts of great contributions—an idea for dynamics here, a pertinent question about breathing there, an instrumental suggestion from someone else. There are so many deeply musical people in this group! And equally important are the devoted folks who just love to sing, and who help make our sound as big and thrilling as it is!”

People attending these concerts are in for a treat—a deep dive into some of the enduring mysteries of this charged time, mysteries stemming both from the natural world and from Christian tradition. Miracles will abound. Come and hear!