 First Wednesdays is sponsored by the Vermont Humanities Council and by the Kellogg Hubbard Library, with video production supported by Orca Media. First Wednesday's program. My name is Rachel Sansha, I'm the program and development coordinator at the Kellogg Hubbard Library, where we host the First Wednesdays program in Montpelier, and we also present poem City each April, and this is our ninth year presenting poem City. So originally this program, poetry and song, was scheduled for February at the State House, part of the Farmer's Night series, and unfortunately there was a wicked snub soar. But I'm actually thrilled that we're here, and we're part of the poem City. And we have sign-up sheets on clipboards in four places, if somebody sees one and can pass them around, that would be great. We also have community feedback forums on the back table, if you're interested in telling us what you like about First Wednesdays. And to introduce tonight's program is Joy Bezos, a board member of the Vermont Humanities Council. Please help me welcome Joy. Good evening. It is my pleasure to welcome you all here this evening. I don't know about you, but frankly this week it still kind of felt like February, so I think we'll all be able to pretend that we're still there. But we at the Manning's Council are really excited to bring this program to you all tonight, and to partner with the Helicopter Library in our First Wednesdays program. So, you know, we have a lot of people today tonight. I'll do it as quickly as I can, but I definitely want you all to know that it is through the generosity of our supporters that we're able to bring these programs to you. So, first I want to thank our three statewide underwriters for First Wednesdays, the Alma Gibbs-Donchin Foundation, the National Life Group Foundation, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services through the Vermont Department of Libraries. I also want to thank, very especially, the underwriter for this evening's performance, Parmalo Real Estate. And I also want to thank the Helicopter Library for their generosity in hosting our First Wednesdays. And in your program you might be able to see that our next program coming up is May 2nd, and that will be at Helicopter Library, and I certainly hope you'll all be able to join us then. So, we are really excited to have the Bedford Chamber Singers with us tonight. It was organized in the fall of 1978 by founding director Valerie Miller, who led the ensemble until 2011. Now led by singer and composer Kevin Prigley, TCS is an auditioned chorus, comprising nearly 50 men and women from a dozen upper-valley towns. Diverse in age and lively ones, these performers are drawn together through the joy of singing and a commitment to sharing adventurous, complex, and engaging music with the community. Okay, so now you know what you're in for tonight. So the TCS repertoire is distinguished by the wide variety of musical styles representing varied traditions from ancient to very contemporary composers, beautifully woven together with poetry and other recitations. If you'd like to learn a little bit more about the Bedford Chamber Singers, there is more information in the program, including some of their upcoming concerts. And I did read my paper. So, please join me in welcoming the Bedford Chamber Singers. Full of manhood, womanhood, infancy, full of common employments, full of grain and trees, oh the joy of my spirit, it is uncaged, it darts like lightning. It is not enough to have this globe for a certain time. I will have thousands of globes at all times. One self I sing, a simple, separate person. I celebrate myself and sing myself, a song of the rolling earth and of words, according. I sing the body electric. I will sing the song of companionship. Come, said the muse, sing me a song no poet yet has chanted. Sing me the universal. Walt Whitman. We are so delighted to be up here. Our chorus is about 50 voices strong. And what you're, what we're singing for you is what we call our outreach ensemble. And that's a few dedicated singers. Sometimes it's as many as half right now. It's about a third of us that want more opportunities to sing. So when the Vermont Humanities Council came along and let us know about this program, we immediately said yes and we started to put it together. Every piece that we'll be singing today is in English because we want the connection between the language of the poems and the music that each setting has put them to be as clear for an English speaking audience as possible. If you're interested, we are singing our 40th anniversary spring concert in May. And the theme for that one, we do themed programming is on connecting with the present moment. Our winter concert was on taking a look at the past. And in this particular 40th anniversary year, we've added another concert on June 30th, the end of June, on taking a look towards the future. Our spring pieces, we're singing in five languages for there. We've got English, Latin, French, German, and Icelandic in that particular program. It's a fabulous program. Extremely interesting music. All the way from Renaissance through something that was just written for this concert. We commissioned Vermont composer Kathy Wonson-Eddie to write a piece for us and it is phenomenal. So we're looking forward to that and if you'd like to make a trip down to Fetford to hear us sing, we're singing in Stratford, Vermont on May 9th in Woodstock, Vermont on the 11th. And then back home in Fetford for two shows on the Sunday the 13th. One last little bit to make sure that the connection between the language and each arrangement of each piece is as clear as we possibly can. We're going to read each poem for you before we sing. I go among trees and sit still. All my story becomes quiet around me like circles on water. My tasks lie in their places where I left them asleep like a cat. Then what is afraid of me comes and lives awhile in my sight. What it fears in me leaves me and the fear of me leaves it. It sings and I hear it song. Then what I am afraid of comes. I live for awhile in its sight. What I fear in it leaves it and the fear of it leaves me. It sings and I hear it song. After days of labor mute in my consternations I hear my song at last and I sing it. As we sing the day turns the trees move. When will bear it. We befriended up stranded and Molly was chased by a horrible thing which raised sidereggs while going muggles. And May came home with a smooth round stone as small as a world. For whatever we lose, like a new or a new, it's always ourselves behind in the sea. It comes. To the radiator of the zoom a wistful little clown whom somebody buried upside down in an ash barrel. So of course Dominic took him home. Mrs. Dominic mended his bright corn trousers quite as if he were really her. And so that's how Dominic has a doll. Dominic has a doll and every now and then my wonderful friend Dominic de Paola made a most tremendous hug knowing I feel that we and worlds are less alive than dogs and dream of the coming. To grow our cats were born to happen. Our most have died in more. Our 20th will open wide over so both and one full. Night cannot be so sky. Sky cannot be so sun full. Through you so I. It comes. Owner Hugh showing the world in shades of brown and blue. The skeins of yarn lie in the wing on chairs and floor around the loom. The weaver loves their colors and their touch and marbles they in silence say so much. The cloth that shelters old and young is all from this same magic spine. Their strength is in their closeness drawn by loom and hand each yarn was strong. Draw the strands together tight. Bold colors glowing in the light. The threads that make the fabric warm will keep this family safe from harm. Trees were not in the plan for sky and ocean. Earth and photographs from far in space. Earth and oceans have their place. A graceful blanket blue and green and there are no fences. But man forgot somewhere in time the years not yours or theirs or mine. And for children yet to be there must be no fences. Borders boundaries walls and wire burn a soul with freedom's fire. Hope is born when we decide there will be no fences. Today's the day we can decide to mend the fabric we divide. A seamless cloth of you and me without any fences. Words that never stops at all and sweetest in the game is heard and soar must be the storm that could abash the little bird that kept so many warm. I've heard it in the chillest land and on the strangest sea yet never in extremity it has the crumb of me Emily Dickinson. Hope is the thing that approaches in the soul and sings the tune and never stops at all Hope is the thing that approaches in the soul and sings the tune and never stops at all So we had a bit of dilemma. We put together a program specifically for the winter. We figure performing in February on the second Wednesday, dragging people out of their warm houses. So we've got a number of songs about snow in this show. And we thought, oh, it's just not snowed out. With our snow program, delayed till April, do we make a change? Right? Somebody had a brilliant idea. Well, we got snowed out. We should honor the snow, right? It's still here. It is a map. It's the 108th day of January. So the next two are pieces of mine. I've written a lot of songs about snow. I love snow, even when it's here in April. These are part of the presses. You are the second audience to hear them. Chairs in snow. Yeah, thank you. Upon the terraces, the garden chairs repose. In fall, they wore their suki dress. Now the leaves of snow. How like the furnishings of youth in backyards of the mine. Residuals of summer's truth in seasons left for high. Roots of darkness growing. Now you are uncurled and cover our eyes with the edge of winter sky, leaning over us in icy stars. Come with your seasons, your fullness, your end, Annie Finch. Roots of darkness growing. But the summer does this work. And soft and slow descends the Henry from where I stood was three long mountains and a wood. I turned and looked the other way and saw three islands in a bed. So with my eyes I traced the line of the horizon, thin and fine, straight around till I was come back to where I'd started from. And all I saw from where I stood was three long mountains and a wood. Over these things I could not see. These were the things that bounded me. And I could touch them with my hand almost, I thought, from where I stand. And all at once things seemed so small my breath came short and scarce at all. But sure the sky is big. I said miles and miles above my head. So here upon my back I'll lie and look my fill into the sky. Edmund St. Vincent Millet. State song, our state song. I have to say having sung all over the place, having sung many state songs. It's a rare community. It's really a beautiful piece. Matt Lou teaches at St. Mike's College in Colchester and is the director of Counter Point, if you've seen us sing. Counter Point has sung in this room quite often. And then we'll end with a once Vermont resident. Gwyneth Walker lived in Randolph for many, many decades. Now lives in Connecticut, I believe. But she's got this beautiful set of texts that are about living and being and living. So we'll read that one before we sing it. But the state song just gets a listen. The shore suggests the seashore. And what I see in the distance looks like seals on a sandbob. Dear to me to lie in the sand fit to preserve the bones of a race for a thousand years to come. This is my home. My native soil. And I am a New Englander of the O Earth are my bones and sinew made to the O Earth. Am I brother? This is my home. My native soil. And I am a New Englander. Henry David Harrell. So if you'd like to make the turn.