2026-2027 Music and Arts Brochure Released – Evensong and an Organ Concert This Week

The 2026-2027 Music and the Arts Concert Series brochure was released digitally and in printed format this week. It contains all the information you will need to stay connected with our parish through our various musical offerings. From September through May, our parish will offer nine Friday Bach’s Lunch Concerts, three Services of Choral Evensong, an Advent Lessons and Carols service, the Fauré Requiem on All Saints’ Day, and a presentation of the Sir John Stainer’s, The Crucifixion, offered a century after it was first presented in our current church building, which opened in March 1927 as a Parish House. The planned church building, which was designed in equal 1920s splendor and was to have been sited in what is now our memorial garden, was never constructed due to the Great Depression.

Paper copies of the 2026-2027 Music and the Arts brochure are available on the table outside the choir room. I invite you to pick up a copy for your household and pick up several to share with family, friends, and neighbors. They make a great invitation to introduce someone to our parish. The music schedule is available on our website under the music tab. Digital copies of the brochure will be available with the next website update.

This Sunday, October 11, 2026, at 5 P.M., the choir and choristers of Emmanuel Episcopal Church will offer a service of Choral Evensong. The officiant and cantor will be the Rev. Canon Marion C. Sprott. The choir will sing the King’s College Service by Joanna Forbes L’Estrange, as well as her set of Preces and Responses commissioned by the Emmanuel Choir in 2019. Published by the Royal School of Church Music, these prayers have now been sung in every major English cathedral. The choir will also sing the anthem, Hide Me Under the Shadow of Thy Wings, by John E. West.

Please note, due to a lack of support, there will not be a reception following Evensong this Sunday, as has been tradition. If you are looking for a hospitality-oriented ministry, please see me. The music ministry is seeking a leader and supporting volunteers to organize our Choral Evensong receptions, which occur three to four times each programmatic year.

This Friday, October 16th, at 12 Noon, I will present an organ concert featuring César Franck’s famous Choral No. 3 in A Minor, written just prior to Franck’s death. The concert will also feature René Becker’s Sonata No. 1 in G Minor. Friday’s concert marks the first time I will be in recital on our C.B. Fisk, Inc. Opus 145 pipe organ since its completion in the spring of 2024. I am excited to share this glorious music with you.

All donations received from Sunday’s Choral Evensong and Friday’s Bach’s Lunch recital will be used for the benefit of our music ministry. Current projects include the restoration of our 1987 Robert Goble and Son harpsichord (built in Oxford, England), replacement of the hammers and necessary regulation work on our 2014 Steinway B piano, and new vestments for the choir.