Charles Villiers Stanford was an Irish composer, teacher, conductor, and organist at Trinity College, Cambridge.  He was heavily influenced by Brahms and perhaps best known for his choral works for church performance, some of which are considered by singers as vocally demanding, massive anthems. "The Blue Bird", a choral setting of Mary Elizabeth Coleridge's poem, stands in stark contrast to much of Stanford's choral music.  The song reflects the poem's capture of a moment of light's reflection as a blue bird flies over a lake.  Much as the bird hovers over the lake, a soprano voice floats over a pool of the choir's homophonic sound underneath.  The soprano voice alternates between delivering full lines of poetry and punctuating the choral lines with one word - blue - which hangs over the ends of the choir's phrases like a lingering reflection, or, as at the end, an unfinished flight into the blue.  This lovely song is a perennial favorite with our chamber singers and they will offer it once again as their musical European odyssey crosses the channel between the British Isles and the Continent and back again. Listen here.

    Awards season is here for movies and television.  Since a surprise Golden Globe win last week for Best Motion Picture Drama, the campaign is on to get "Bohemian Rhapsody", the Queen bio-pic, back in theatres ahead of Oscar nominations later this month.  Since the US release of the movie in November, 2018, it hasn't exactly rung bells with critics, but, as is often the case, it's a hit with movie-goers.  So on 1/11/19, 20th Century Fox will re-release the film as a sing-along in more than 750 theaters in North America giving Queen fans the chance to sing "We Are the Champions" and other hits with the on-screen band and Rami Malek, who portrays front-man Freddie Mercury, at a theatre near you.