Choral Arts of Chattanooga will be joined by the Chattanooga Girls Choir in a performance of Paul Winter’s Missa Gaia, or Earth Mass, on Sunday, April 27, at 4 p.m. in celebration of Earth Day 2014. The program will be presented at Brainerd United Methodist Church, 4315 Brainerd Road. The mass is written for choir and solo voices, with accompaniment by string, woodwind, and percussion instruments, and integrates the audio voices of wolf and whale.
Missa Gaia was composed in 1980 by seven-time Grammy-winning saxophonist Paul Winter, integrating world music with songs from the wild to celebrate the whole earth as a sacred space. Since then, the mass has been performed annually at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City for the Feast of St. Francis, which is the blessing of the animals.
Earth Day originated in 1970, with the first Earth Day widely considered to be the birth of the modern environmental movement. Earth Day 2014 will focus on the global theme: Green Cities.
Choral Arts has brought to the Chattanooga area choral literature from all genres and from all eras for nearly 30 years. An auditioned adult chorus, the group performs under the direction of Keith S. Reas. LuAnn Holden is the artistic director for the Chattanooga Girls Choir. This performance is funded in part, by a grant from the Tennessee Arts Commission.
For more information on the performance, call Sandy Shaw at 706.398-3557, send an email to choralarts.chattanooga@gmail.com or visit the group’s page at www.facebook.com/ChoralArts.