The Brattleboro Concert Choir presents “POWER – Music of Defiance and Strength” at Persons Auditorium in Marlboro, Saturday and Sunday, May 13 and 14.

Led by Director Jonathan Harvey, the group’s performances will feature Joseph Haydn’s Lord Nelson’s Mass and Marianne Martines’s Dixit Dominus with orchestra.

“The Concert Choir is particularly excited for these concerts, since they will be our first performances with full orchestra since January 2020 – over three years ago,” says Harvey. “The two pieces in these concerts are full of emotional hairpin turns, from delight to dread and misery to euphoria. We hope to really take audiences on a journey.”

He continues, “The two composers on this program are roughly contemporaries, but while Haydn has enjoyed continuous performances since he was alive, Martines’ music has been long neglected. While she was alive, Martines moved in noble circles and would play piano duets with Mozart for Empress Maria Theresa in Vienna. She was recognized during her life as an exceptional musician, but as the musical canon is constructed and reconstructed, women musicians are so often written right out of history.”