Buy this Photo Jeff Evans Director Marianna Wilcox leads the Anglican Singers in a dress rehearsal of the English service of Choral Evensong on Wednesday in St. James Church, New London. Buy this Photo Jeff Evans Andrea Anderson, center, and other members of the Anglican Singers rehearse for the English service of Choral Evensong which will be prsented at St. James Church in New London. Buy this Photo Jeff Evans Jackie Yeung, left, practices her part during a rehearsal at the St. James Church in New London Wednesday.

By BEN JOHNSON
Day Staff Writer, Arts/Music Reporter
Published on 12/6/2005

Inside the sanctuary of New London's St. James Church, singing is a religious experience. It's in the choir stalls, the prayer books, and the stained glass window depicting Jesus on the south wall, where an unusual amount of sunlight is often drawn to the halo around his head.

But for the Anglican Singers, a 20-year-old organization that calls St. James its home, singing is a spiritual exercise that can affect anyone, atheist or Anglican, Episcopal or Unitarian.

Led by director Marianna Wilcox and accompanied by organist Simon Holt, the Anglican Singers have been performing the English service of Choral Evensong at St. James since 1996. A mix of singers of all ages and denominations, the 30-member group of artists-in-residence is gaining dedicated followers who enjoy listening to the Evensong service, which consists of 16th-century English church music and a few short passages from “The Book of Common Prayer.”

Steve Heller of Waterford has been singing with the group since it was formed by Wilcox in 1985.

“Anglican music is a specific kind of choral music, and until recently had not been well performed in this country,” says Heller, who is 61. “Marianna was interested in doing that,

and she developed an organization with singers who could sing this material. We've sort of been at the beginning of a revival of that kind of music in this area.”

The Anglican Singers began rehearsing in Stonington, but eventually moved on an invitation to sing at St. James. Heller says that the Anglican Singers' particular service comes from the monastic tradition and that Evensong is a kind of combination of the historical office of Vespers and office of Compline, creating a mostly musical service that can appeal to many people.

“The Evensong Services are beautiful to me,” says Susan Bainbridge, a self-described atheist who has also been singing with the chorus almost since the group's beginning. “It's not heavy. There's no sermon, which I like, and it's just mainly music with a few readings interspersed throughout.”

Every year, the Anglican singers have six performances. Most take place at St. James, but the chorus also takes some road trips to perform in churches from upstate New York to Boston. The performance is sometimes in English and sometimes in Latin.

On Sunday, the group will perform its only non-Evensong service of Lessons and Carols for Advent, which is meant to calm the listener for the coming winter months. This service is a more recent addition, in which leading community members are asked to read some of the lessons before each passage of singing.

“It's been very interesting to watch as we have gained a following,” says Wilcox, who along with founding the chorus has also recruited most of its members over the years. “And many of the people who attend our services regularly don't have an affiliation with the Episcopal church, but they enjoy our service as a way to relax and rejuvenate for the coming week. Nothing is required of them. They sit quietly, and they listen, taking in what the music does all by itself.”

The Evensong Service performed by the Anglican Singers emerged from the Henrican, Edwardian, and Elizabethan reigns and was instituted during the reigns of King Henry VIII and his son King Edward VI during the establishment of the Church of England.

There are a few specific rules for the service, but the music itself can be drawn from a wide range of traditions. Marianna sets up a separate service for each of the liturgical seasons and tries to pick appropriate music. For Lent, the group sings plainsong, or a more simple and ancient form of music, while their Easter concert utilizes more elegant arrangements.

“That's part of the joy of Evensong,” says Wilcox. “We can use plainsong, modal music or whatever we choose. All periods of music history and musical tradition have been used in choral Evensong.”

Historically, the church music was sung by men and boys choruses, but The Anglican Singers is a mixed group, with men, women and young people all taking part. Amy Lewis, 17, of Noank, is one of the youngest Anglican Singers. Lewis says that on a recommendation from one of her home school teachers, the teenager auditioned for the choir her freshman year and has been a member ever since.

“The whole experience is exceptional,” says Lewis. “From getting the piece, learning it all the way through, to the performance. Some of this music is very interesting, and for someone who started singing when I was 6, it's really wonderful. I'd have to say that hearing it all come together is my favorite part.”

Lewis started out as a “probationer,” which is what young singers in the group are called while their voices are changing, before their choir membership is full fledged. Probationers wear all black until they've been in the chorus long enough for their voice to change (or remain at a convincing constant) and until their level of maturity and understanding of the music is on par with the adults. Eventually, they get a white “cotta,” which is like a tunic, to go over their black vestments, whether they've moved from the treble vocal parts or not.

“I just kind of fell in love with Marianna and the group,” says Lewis. “They're great singers, so I stayed all four years, and I'm hoping to do choir in college, because of their influence.”

Many of the singers in the group sing in their own church or community choruses (Bainbridge, for instance, sings with the Westerly Chorus). Because of the fact that so many of Wilcox's singers are involved in other musical endeavors, she says the weekly rehearsal schedule is flexible at certain times of the year, and this flexibility may be part of what keeps so many of the Anglican Singers in longtime membership. But, more than anything, most agree that it's about the music and the friendships within the Chorus.

“The music is very satisfying to sing,” says Bainbridge, “and it's the music that hooks me. But the group has also become very much like a family. My son and daughter-in-law sing in the chorus. We all love to sing, and when bad things happen to one of us, the group is there to support and help us get through. It's a very nice bunch of people.” 
 

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