Listening to Holy Week

Joyful music begins the Easter season at Princeton United Methodist Church  on Palm Sunday, April 9, at the 9:30 and 11 a.m. services. Tom Shelton directs the children’s choir at the 9:30 service.

For Holy Thursday Communion, April 13, at 7:30 p.m., a sextet will sing works by Byrd, Lassus, and Victoria. On Good Friday, an excerpt from Pergolesi’s “Stabat Mater” will be sung at the noon service, and Hyosang Park will direct Anton Bruckner’s Requiem with soloists, choir, and chamber ensemble at 7:30 p.m.

Easter Sunday, April 16, begins with a sunrise service at 6:30 a.m. on the lawn, followed by a continental breakfast. At 9:30 and 11 a.m. traditional Services of the Resurrection feature the Chancel and Handbell Choirs and a brass quartet.

On April 23, Tom Shelton directs the Children’s Choirs in “The Tale of the Three Trees” musical at the 9:30 and 11 a.m. service and Christopher McWilliams presents a free organ concert “This Joyful Eastertide” at 2 p.m. An offering will be taken.

On April 30, Communiversity Sunday, Tom Shelton directs the Youth Choir in a musical at 9:30 a.m. There is no 11 a.m. service that day, but at 2 p.m. the children and youth present their musicals inside the sanctuary.

As composer Nico Muhly says, church choir singing is  “meant for worship…to be heard in a state of quiet meditation.. to guide the mind out of the building into unseen heights and depths.”