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.

At noon on Good Friday, the sung Passion will be featured for the first time in several years at St. Michael’s. It’s an opportunity to experience the Passion in a different—albeit historically traditional—way as it is chanted with choral exclamations from the St. Michael’s Singers composed by Renaissance composer Tomás Luis de Victoria. We are using a special arrangement adapted to the new English translation as given in the Proposed Trial Use Liturgy that attempts to avoid anti-Jewish language.

Sharing the musical leadership at the 6:30 pm bilingual Good Friday service will be the Saints & Singers Choir and Misa musicians Tito and El Coro as we journey through the Stations of the Cross and meditate at the Veneration with several hymns in both English and Spanish.

Saturday’s Great Vigil will be a complex, musically satisfying service with THREE anthems offered by the St. Michael’s Singers, including one in Spanish. Several musical interludes and voluntaries will provide interest and space to reflect on the readings and other liturgical guideposts. We’ll sing beloved hymns we save for just this service once a year, and we’ll celebrate the new light of the risen Christ as one community in worship.

Easter Sunday will feature—as always—the majestic Portland Brass Quintet at 9:00 and 11:00 am. Their grand, classic sonority will accompany the St. Michael’s Singers on two anthems of rejoicing by Canadian composer Stephanie Martin and an arrangement of an excerpt from Handel’s Judas Macabbeus, respectively. Join us for any or all of these thoughtful Holy Week services.