The Acadia Choral Society

Welcome to the Acadia Choral Society.

ACS has been performing concerts for almost 50 years  in downeast Maine, performing this season in two locations on Saturday December 2nd at 3 pm and St. Andrew Lutheran Church in Ellsworth and on Sunday, December 3rd at 3 pm at St. Saviours Episcopal Church in Bar Harbor

We began rehearsing September 12 for the two Christmas concerts and invite you to join us. 

Entitled We Sing the Great Mystery, this Christmas program is centered on the Medieval antiphon — O magnum mysterium, (O great mystery) — telling that animals are seeing the new-born Lord lying in a feeding-trough.

This song looks at the events of Christmas from the point of view of the stable — a stunning plot-twist in the history of human society — in contrast to the viewpoint of the angels singing “Gloria” hovering over the shepherds’ flocks.

We will be singing musical settings of this text ranging from Gregorian chant through the Renaissance up to the 21st century, by composers as diverse as Palestrina, Victoria, Poulenc, and Lauridsen. Interspersed among these compositions will be arrangements of Christmas carols, some well-known and some not, drawn from the Carols for Choirs series originating at King’s College in Cambridge University, including works by John Rutter, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Zoltán Kodály, and Elizabeth Poston.

 We sill sing two concerts:

• On Saturday, December 2 in Ellsworth at as St. Andrew Lutheran Church at 3:00 pm

• On Sunday, December 3in Bar Harbor at St. Saviour’s Episcopal Church at 3:00 pm

The chorus rehearses at the Moore Center in Ellsworth

Check out the For Singers pages to learn more and to sign up!

 

Music that inspires and strengthens community….