Featured Choral Evensong from Wednesday, May 15, 2019
Frances Perkins
This week’s Choral Evensong was sung on May 15, 2019 by the Illuminare Chamber Choir from Youngstown, Ohio, under the direction of Jon Simsic. That evening was our annual “Youngstown Evensong,” as the homilist was the Rev. Gayle Catinella, Rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Youngstown.
We commemorated Frances Perkins (1880-1965), U.S. Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945. Perkins is the longest serving Secretary of Labor, and was the first woman appointed to a U.S. Presidential Cabinet. She was a devout Episcopalian. The Department of Labor building in Washington, D.C., is named after her.
Appropriately, the music that evening included two works from the pen of American composers. The responses were the first performance of the brand-new “Trinity Responses” by Jon Simsic. The Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis were sung to the setting in D by Leo Sowerby (1895-1968). One of the leading American composers of his time, Sowerby spent most of his life in Chicago where he directed the music at St. James Church (now Cathedral) and taught at the American Conservatory of Music. He moved to Washington, D.C., in the last decade of his life to become director of the then-new College of Church Musicians at the National Cathedral. The anthem is the much-loved “Turn back, O man, forswear thy foolish ways” by Gustav Holst.
The Illuminare Chamber Choir (Youngstown, Ohio)
John Simsic, director
Todd Wilson, organist
Homilist: The Rev. Gayle Cantinella (Rector, St. John’s Episcopal Church, Youngstown, Ohio)
Preces and Responses: “Trinity Responses” – John Simsic
Service: Leo Sowerby in D (1895-1968)
Anthem: Turn Back, O Man – Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
Psalm 37: 27-31 (Bairstow)
Hymns: 653, 597
Evensong Order of Service
Prelude
Opening Preces
Office Hymn
Psalm
First Lesson
Magnificat
Second Lesson
Nunc Dimittis
Apostle’s Creed
Responses, Lord’s Prayer, and Collects
Collect for the Day
Greeting
Homily
Anthem
Spoken Prayers
Concluding Versicle and Response
Blessing
Hymn
Voluntary
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