The verdict is in: we have a fantastic spring concert in the works for you, friends! Waypoints and Wanderings traces a journey. Imagine setting off in the early morning half-light, full of excitement and anticipation - accompanied by 12th-century songs of pilgrimage from the Codex Calixtinus. The freedom of wide-open spaces draws you onward, like the young shepherds in Otmar Mácha’s Hoj, hura, hoj! (O, mountains, o!), calling to each other across the valleys. The trail is not always clear, though; sometimes it’s more like a riddle you have to figure out (as in Bob Chilcott’s clever riddle settings, Swansongs.) You will have difficult choices to make, as soloist Naama Friedman discovers in The Real Group’s amusing jazz tour-de-force, The Grass Grows Greener. The journey can be grim and terrifying (Grayston Ives’s setting of Psalm 18, “The sorrows of death,” paints a vivid picture), but if you hold fast to waypoints - the anchors in your life that guide and steady you - you need not fear. Perhaps you hold fast to faith, as Saint Teresa of Ávila instructs in Joan Szymko’s stunning Nada te turbe (“Let nothing disturb you”). Perhaps it is love that guides you (come and hear The OJay’s groovy cover of Paul Simon’s Loves Me Like a Rock), or perhaps love of country - beautifully expressed in Lili’u e, John Kaulia’s tender ode to Queen Lili’uokalani, last ruler of the sovereign nation of Hawai’i. At journey’s end, after so many twists and turns, you may have ended up somewhere different from where you thought you were headed! But, as in Säge’s lush Desert Song, you will end up where you were meant to be: home.

Photo by Sorasak on Unsplash.