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The 24-member Rocky Mount Chamber Choir will continue their 9th season of performances with their Spring Concert at 4:00 PM on Sunday, May  5th, at First Presbyterian Church in downtown Rocky Mount.  

The concert will include love songs set to works by well-known poets Teasdale, Burns, and Shakespeare.  Selections by American composers Elaine Hagenberg ("The Music of Stillness") and Shawn Kirchner ("Sweet Rivers"), along with several spirituals ("God's Got the Whole World" and "The Battle of Jericho") round out the program.

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Celebrating the beginning of our 10th season, the concert will feature the choir, several vocal soloists from the choir, ECU trumpet professor Gabriel DiMartino, trumpeter Dr. Dan Crocker, and organist Virginia Vance. We are grateful to our friends who have made gifts to RMCC since our founding. It is our hope that this benefit concert will offer a convenient opportunity for our audience members to make a gift that will help us continue to offer concerts free of charge. Due to dangerous weather conditions on the afternoon of last year's Christmas concert, the decision was made to cancel the performance. This benefit concert will allow us to recoup some of the costs associated with that cancellation.

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Haydn's "Achieved Is the Glorious Work" will open the program, followed by sacred selections in anticipation of All Saints Day, including Dan Forrest's "No Night There" and Parker/Shaw's "Saints Bound for Heaven." We'll close the first half of the concert with a couple of prayers, including an arrangement of "Lord, Listen to Your Children Praying." Three selections on the second half of the program are focused on the joy of singing, as in Norwegian composer Kim Arnesen's "Flight Song" - "All we are, we have found in song..." The women of the choir are featured in a folk song from Malaysia, while the men have fun with a Neapolitan art song. Shawn Kirchner's wonderful "I'll Be On My Way" closes the concert.

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The concert will be the program that was canceled last year due to the weather. Included will be John Rutter's "Gloria" for choir, brass (four trumpets, two tenor trombones, bass trombone, tuba), tympani, and organ, along with carols and popular songs of the season, with chamber orchestral accompaniment, including "O Come, All Ye Faithful" - "It's Beginning to Look Like Christmas" - "Believe" from "The Polar Express."

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This will be a "Greatest Hits" concert. We will sing some of our most popular selections from the past ten years, including classical, spirituals, gospel, folk songs, and musical theatre.