Upcoming Events
Announcing VAE’s annual summer concert!
Sunday, June 22, 4 pm
Duke University Chapel
Admission free; 1 hour
Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil
(Vsénoshchnoye bdéniye)
sung in Church Slavonic
Rachmaninoff’s beloved unaccompanied All-Night Vigil from 1915 has been called “the greatest musical achievement of the Russian Orthodox Church.” Inspired to create a work that recovered the true spirit of Orthodox worship services that he remembered fondly from his youth, Rachmaninoff chose time-honored chant melodies used in Orthodox services and wrapped them in wondrously rich harmonies. Rachmaninoff chose traditional chant melodies in several different styles and enveloped them in wondrously rich harmonies. The work’s 15 movements show a broad variety of complexity and texture, each one bringing to eloquent expression all the drama and nuance inherent in these treasured texts. The words are from the sung portions of the All-Night Vigil service, which includes the evening service of Vespers and the morning service of Matins. As such, they embody the act of remaining hopeful while waiting for night’s bleak darkness to come to an end and a new day to begin with the joyous light of dawn. Infused with multiple layers of meaning and metaphor, the hourlong All-Night Vigil can speak profoundly to all people, whether religious or not, even sung in Church Slavonic.
We hope that you will come to hear our 36-voice choir perform this sublime music and to experience its transcendent beauty in the incomparable acoustical setting of Duke Chapel!
Some rare and intensely beautiful fare that was almost without exception profoundly inspiring and moving, particularly given the magnificence of the singing… We may never take this art for granted, so it’s worthwhile reflecting on how much work goes into it… so what one remembers is the sheer beauty as each of the individual pieces unfold… so pure, so refined was the singing
About VAE
The Vocal Arts Ensemble of Durham was founded in 1996 by Rodney Wynkoop to provide superior choral performance opportunities for outstanding singers in North Carolina’s Triangle region (Durham, Chapel Hill, and Raleigh). Its 32 members are selected mainly from among musicians who have sung in other choral groups under Dr. Wynkoop’s direction.
VAE sings two concerts each year: a summer concert in June and a holiday concert in December. They have also frequently been chosen to perform at national and divisional conferences of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA). The group sings music of many different styles and eras, much of it unaccompanied, ranging from simple folksongs to highly complicated works like Tallis’s Spem in alium, Schoenberg’s Friede Auf Erden, Martin’s Messe, and MacMillan’s Cantos Sagrados. The group has released two CD recordings: My Spirit Sang All Day (on the Arsis label) and O Holy Night, a collection of Christmas music from past VAE concerts.
YouTube Channel
Visit the VAE’s YouTube channel to see professionally recorded past live performances, including the 25th Anniversary Concert in Duke Chapel and the 2021 Holiday Concert at First Presbyterian Church.