Spring 2025

From the Music Director

 

Hello friends,

Feeling the freedom of one’s creative imagination, bathing in beauty. These are some of the gifts music offers, gifts we hope to offer to all of you as we turn to the final months of our church year.

This year’s Music Sunday serendipitously lands on the first Sunday of the month, the 4th of May, where the theme is Beauty. In our current political climate it can be tempting to think that we always need to be on alert, always ready to respond to the next challenge. But sometimes what we most need is the deep healing, humanizing power of Beauty. Beauty helps us feel, believe in, and momentarily be in, the world we want to be. Our program of beautiful music, featuring our UCM choir and pianist Eliza, will include some past favorites as well as some new discoveries, and we are thrilled to invite some fabulous guest musicians to join us: singers David Ruffin and Lillian Broderick, and cellist Michael Close. This year we are again hoping to offer the same program, slightly modified, for an afternoon performance on May 4th as well.

A bittersweet aspect of this spring is that at the end of the church year our wonderful pianist Eliza Thomas will be retiring from her position, after 10 years. She has given so much of her heart and sensitivity and musicianship to our congregation, and will be deeply missed. We will have opportunities to celebrate and appreciate her, so stay tuned!

The Pianist/Accompanist hiring committee, consisting of Jim Phinney, Diane Marie and me, Donia Prince, has begun meeting and receiving applications. Our hope is to find our new pianist/accompanist (I can’t say “Eliza’s replacement”!) before the end of the church year.

With love,
Donia Prince