The Burlington Choral Society will perform a program based on choral music from that remarkable Baltic Republic of Estonia, including what we believe to be the North American premiere of Tõnu Kõrvits' exquisite Kreek's Notebook, which is based on Estonian sacred folk melodies collected by Cyrillus Kreek. This program will also feature a piece commissioned for the BCS by Estonian-American composer Lembit Beecher. Lembit is in the first or second year of a three-year appointment as the first Composer In Residence of Opera Philadelphia in collaboration with Gotham Chamber Opera and Music Theatre Group of New York. From the Scrag Mountain Music website: "Born of Estonian and American parents, he grew up under the redwoods in Santa Cruz, California, a few miles from the wild Pacific. Since then he has lived in Boston, Houston, Ann Arbor, Berlin and New York, earning degrees from Harvard, Rice and the University of Michigan. This varied background has made him particularly sensitive to place, ecology and the strong emotional relationships that people forge with patterns in nature. He is also interested in memory and the various ways we tell stories, from emotional personal narratives to crisp and clean documentaries. Recent pieces have focused on reflections of the immigrant experience and the integration of recorded interviews with music."

We will also be featuring two pieces by Arvo Pärt, Magnificat and Estonian Lullaby, a selection of orchestral works, and three songs that are sung at the Estonian Song Festival, an event at which a chorus of 30,000 voices sings to an audience of 80,000!

This concert is sponsored by the Argosy Foundation and the Vermont Council on World Affairs.

Ticket Info: $25 for General Admission, $20 for Students and Seniors

Advance tickets will be available at the Flynntix Box Office and www.flynntix.org