Arizona Repertory Singers' putting on spring concerts

In the event that Elliot Jones ever finds himself stranded on a desert island, the song he would likely be singing to himself would be Herbert Howells’ “Like as the Hart Desireth the Waterbrooks.”

“This is a piece on my desert island list,” the Arizona Repertory Singers music director said.

Howells’ piece anchors Arizona Repertory Singers’ spring concerts that kick off this weekend. The 40-voice ensemble, accompanied by an organist, will perform two distinctive concerts with different programs:

• “A New Heaven” at 4 p.m. Sunday, April 7, at Oro Valley’s Episcopal Church of the Apostles, 12111 N. La Cholla Blvd.; and 3 p.m. April 14 at Christ Church United Methodist, 655 N. Craycroft Road.
• And “Psalms of David and Songs of Solomon” at 3 p.m. April 28 at Temple Emanu-El, 225 N. Country Club Road.

“My idea was that even though the concerts are close together, the program can still be mostly different because there is so much music in the choir’s repertoire that we can revive,” Jones said.

The concerts, though, do share a couple works, including the Tucson premiere of Latvian composer  Peteris Vasks’ “The Fruit of Silence,” which Jones described as a meditative setting of text by Mother Teresa.

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“It’s so new and beautiful and lovely, people would love the chance to hear it twice,” he said.

Tucson audiences also may never have heard the Howells piece, and they surely have never heard it with the accompaniment of the grand Wicks Pipe Organ that Kevin Seal will play on April 7 at Episcopal Church of the Apostles.

The 389-pipe organ, installed in the Tucson church just last year, was built in 1985 and had been in service at Francis Xavier Cathedral in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

“The Psalms of David and Songs of Solomon” concert on April 28 will feature a work by University of Arizona composer Daniel Asia that sets E.E. Cummings’ poem “Purer Than Purest Pure” in a 20th-century musical style of neotonal harmonic language. That program also includes David Lang’s 2016 work “Make Peace” that is inspired by the last section of the Kaddish, a Jewish prayer said in memory of the dead.

Also on that concert: Psalm settings by C.V. Stanford, Arthur Honegger, James Macmillan and a “take-your-breath-away” setting of Psalm 150 by Brazilian composer Ernani Aguiar.

Tickets are $18 in advance at arsingers.org and $20 at the door; students with an ID are admitted free.