The TLU choirs, under the direction of Dr. Douglas Boyer, director of the TLU School of Music and choirs, will soon take to the road for its annual spring tour, visiting high schools, and performing in area churches. This year’s choir tour program reflects on rebirth and the beautiful imagery of spring bringing the renewal of life. This powerful metaphor of renewal has been used by poets and writers for generations. In 1947 Langston Hughes wrote “In Time of Silver Rain” for his friend, Lorraine Hansberry, who had been diagnosed with cancer. Using springtime rain as a metaphor for new life and hope, the poem illustrates the transformation of nature in the spring—with green grasses emerging, flowers lifting their heads, butterflies fluttering, and trees sprouting new leaves, singing of life. This beautiful poem was set to music by composer, conductor, and pianist Brittney Boykin (B. E. Boykin) whose distinctive musical voice expresses the breadth of imagery and emotions of Hughes’ poem.
A leading poet of our own time, Charles Anthony Silvestri, was commissioned to write a new text on the same theme of the cycle of life and the hope of renewal. Susan LaBarr, a celebrated composer and music editor, was commissioned to write the music for Silvestri’s lyrics, “When All Is Still.” Premiered at Christmas Vespers 2024, this beautiful work begins with the weight of the cold stillness of winter but asks the listener to look closer as the signs of spring begin to break through, realizing that hope only “appears to hide”—and that nothing has truly died. This work was commissioned by Dr. Boyer in loving memory of his nephew, Adam Boyer, who died unexpectedly at the age of twenty-one.
Most of the works on the concert program represent the unique voices of many remarkable female composers, including Nadia Boulanger, B. E. Boykin, Margaret Bonds, Susan LaBarr, Elaine Hagenberg, and Sara Bareilles. The two works by Margaret Bonds, on texts by W.E.B. Du Bois and Janice Lovoos, are recently published works that were never available to the public during Bonds’s lifetime. Thanks to the permission of the Margaret Bonds family, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, the Hildegard Publishing Company, and the work of editor John Michael Cooper, choirs and audiences alike can now experience these important, meaningful works.
The TLU Treble Choir, Kantorei Chamber Choir, and the TLU choir are joined by pianists Dr. SungEun Park and Ms. Cristina Castro, faculty cellist Dr. Elizabeth Lee, and faculty violinist Dr. Eric Siu.
This year’s tour, which runs March 20–21, will take the choirs to two high schools—in Comfort and Marble Falls. Church performances will be at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Comfort on the 20th and at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Marble Falls on the 21st, both at 7 p.m. The tour will wrap up with a home concert in TLU’s Chapel of the Abiding Presence at 7 p.m. on March 25. The performances are free and open to the public, so make plans to join the TLU Choirs, pianists, and instrumentalists for an inspiring musical performance of hope, peace, and love.
