Brattleboro Concert Choir: “Thy Coming Morrow will be Clear & Bright: Music of Prophecy & the Future “

The Brattleboro Concert Choir offers two concerts that will help audiences to believe our society can address the current challenges we face together.

The concerts are scheduled Saturday, January 31, at 2 p.m. and Sunday, February 1, at 4 p.m. at the Latchis Theatre in downtown Brattleboro.

The program’s title, ‘Thy Coming Morrow Will be Clear and Bright,’ comes from a poem by early 20th century poet and civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson. This work, written by a Black man in the post-Reconstruction United States in the form of a Shakespearean sonnet, speaks to the necessity of courage in the face of oppression, cruelty, and darkness.

Marques L.A. Garrett’s 2022 piece, “My Heart Be Brave,” is also inspired by a poem. Garrett’s work communicates ideas of fear and hope, “which feel tailor-made for our moment in history. The thing that resonates most strongly about the piece is its hard-won hopefulness,” explains Music Director Jonathan Harvey.

In addition to Garrett’s piece, the program will include works by Franz Schubert, Aaron Copland, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Bob Dylan.