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ViVoce in Bloom: Songs for a Golden Summer

St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church
Portland, OR

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ViVoce in Bloom: Songs for a Golden Summer

ViVoce celebrates its 13th year of singing to Portland with a collection of favorites from prior concerts. Best-loved songs come from around the world and express longing and loneliness, family connection, and joyfully finding ones way. The group will sing African-American and southern songs to clap to, a haunting Romanian lullabye, a Newfoundland dance tune, light-hearted French and Italian madrigals, and others from Slovakia, Serbia, Poland, Bulgaria, and Wales.
Concert Highlights

Bright Morning Stars Are Rising arranged by folk singer and songleader Joe Hickerson. Hickerson is known for his collaboration with Pete Seeger on Where have all the flowers gone? and for his 35 years (1963-1998) as the Librarian and Director of the Archive of Folk Song at the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress.

Ill Fly Away/Wide River two uplifting spirituals about moving on. Ill Fly Away may be one of the most often recorded gospel songs. A 1956 recording by the Kossoy sisters was used in the film Oh, Brother Where Art Thou. Wide River was first performed by the Fisk Jubilee Singers in the late 19th century. ViVoces arrangement is based on the 1925 version as rendered by James Weldon Johnson (also known for his NAACP leadership) and his brother, John Rosamund Johnson.

Joc de Leagane, Traditional Romanian/Transylvanian Dance Song. A haunting lullaby, this song once accompanied a cradle dance, danced by mothers in honor of the midwife. The songs text describes the longing that mothers carry, once their youthful lives are set aside in order to raise their children.

In Il Est Bel et Bon, a lighthearted 15th century French madrigal by Pierre Passereau two women gossip about the merits of their husbands. One woman explains that her husband cleans house and feeds the chickens while she enjoys herself. The chickens cluck in response.