The Choral Arts Society of Washington will bring Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Dona Nobis Pacem, a 40-minute plea for peace written in 1936 as Europe moved toward another world war, to Alexandria’s Schlesinger Concert Hall and Arts Center on April 18th. This timely concert asks the audience to imagine how we create peace in an era dominated by strife.
What makes this performance unlike anything in the area this season: midway through the concert, the music pauses. Professor Peter Loge, Director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, will lead the audience through a guided civic conversation about the questions the music raises. Not a lecture, but a genuine moment of reflection, together, in the room.
After the interval discussion, Choral Arts will perform Knut Nystedt’s Be Not Afraid and Cecilia McDowall’sThe Gift to Sing, before closing with Gustav Holst’s Two Psalms, to guide the evening from catharsis into hope.
The performance takes place Saturday, April 18th at 5PM at the Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall and Arts Center on the NOVA Alexandria Campus. Parking is free. You can learn more about the show from Choral Arts on Facebook and Instagram as well.
Conductor Marie Bucoy-Calavan became Artistic Director of the Choral Arts Society of Washington in 2024, bringing with her a career built on stages from Carnegie Hall to the Hollywood Bowl and a belief that choral music is, at its core, an act of community. A Filipina American conductor and mother, she represents a new kind of leadership for one of Washington’s most storied musical institutions. From Darkness To Light will also feature soprano Amy Broadbent, bass-baritone Edmund Milly, tenor Allan Palaicos Chan and organist Matthew Steynor.
