Thank you to all our choirs at St. Michael’s for bringing such power and passion to our Holy Week services. We sang in English and Spanish (and Latin), enjoyed participation from young and old, combined or shared musical responsibilities with multiple choirs, and provided the score to our journey through the passion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Join us for Holy Week as we reflect and celebrate through music and singing. On Maundy Thursday, April 17, the St. Michael’s Singers and Choristers will join forces to provide two anthems (and lead many hymns) as we experience foot-washing, the last supper, and the starkness of the stripping of the altar.

This week’s offertory anthems are Mary-centric, as Sunday’s gospel describes Mary anointing Jesus’ feet with perfume. At 9:00 am, the St. Michael’s Singers offer an arrangement of the spiritual “O Mary, Don’t You Weep” with soloists Palmer and Beth.

Upcoming music for Holy Week includes a wide variety of choral repertoire from the English Renaissance to the 21st century. You’ll hear selections by English composers William Byrd (c. 1540-1623) and Henry Purcell (1659-1695) as well as anthems by Canadian composer Stephanie Martin (b. 1962) and American legend Alice Parker (1925-2023), and lots more in between!

We’ve programmed a truly classic anthem this Sunday: Herbert Howells’ “Like as the hart desireth the waterbrooks.” Written in 1941 and sung in Anglican churches and cathedrals throughout the world during Lent (the text is based on Psalm 43:1-3), it describes the psalmist’s spiritual thirst for God, comparing it to a deer searching for water.

Sunday’s offertory anthem is by Imogen Holst (pictured), the only child of British composer Gustav Holst. In A Hymne to Christ, she sets the first two verses of one of John Donne’s Divine poems, including the text “In what torne ship soever I embarke,/ That ship shall be my embleme of thy Arke.”

This Sunday is Woman Composer Sunday, as recognized by the American Guild of Organists, the Society of Women Organists, and other organizations. The organ prelude and postlude are by Brenda Portman and Maureen Howell, respectively, who are both winners from the American Guild of Organists’ 2025 Woman Composer Sunday Organ Composition Competition.

Now we need more than ever to keep celebrating joy, bravery, and expression in all its forms. Our choir members are voluntarily putting themselves out there for our Broadway Night fundraiser: singing, dancing, memorizing lyrics and choreography, preparing a welcoming, beautified space with silent auction items, wine and dessert.

To wrap up Black History Month, Sunday’s organ prelude will be by Betty Jackson King (1928-1994), who taught at Dillard University in New Orleans and in New Jersey public schools. King was part of Chicago’s Black Renaissance and was especially known for her vocal works, but this prelude was from her only organ suite.

For this season after the Epiphany, and in recognition of Black History Month, we have programmed the works of several prominent African American composers. Our service music that remains the same each week for a season includes the Gloria or Song of Praise, the Sanctus (“Holy, holy, holy”), and the Fraction (the sung moment at which the bread is broken).