COME. LISTEN. BE PART OF SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL.
Sunday, November 8, 2026 | 3:00 PM
Valley Presbyterian Church | Brookfield, Connecticut 06804
$20 suggested donation at the door
Connecticut Choral Society
Eric Dale Knapp, conductor
GIVE YOURSELF 90 MINUTES.
When was the last time you sat in a room and simply listened?
No screen. No news. No deadline. No place you need to be next.
On November 8, the Connecticut Choral Society invites Western Connecticut to gather for an afternoon built around one of the simplest and most powerful things human beings do together: make music.
The journey begins with one cello playing Bach.
From that solitary voice, other instruments and voices gradually enter. Music by Maurice Duruflé, Dan Forrest, Ole Karsten Sundlisæter and Andrew Lloyd Webber opens different perspectives on compassion, memory, human connection and our search for meaning.
Then the full Connecticut Choral Society gathers for one of the most beautiful works ever written for human voices: Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem.
You do not need to know this music beforehand.
You only need to come.
THE PROGRAM
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Sarabande
from Suite No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1008
MAURICE DURUFLÉ
Pie Jesu
from Requiem, Op. 9
DAN FORREST
Where Charity and Love Prevail
OLE KARSTEN SUNDLISÆTER
Prayer of Saint Francis
MAURICE DURUFLÉ
Ubi caritas
ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER
Pie Jesu
from Requiem
GABRIEL FAURÉ
Requiem, Op. 48
Program runs approximately 90 minutes without intermission.
ONE JOURNEY. MANY VOICES.
There is an architecture to this program.
It begins with solitude.
Bach’s unaccompanied cello speaks without words. From that quiet beginning comes Duruflé’s Pie Jesu, joining instrumental and human voices. Gradually the musical world expands. Across the afternoon, composers separated by centuries encounter remarkably similar questions.
What do we owe one another?
How do we respond to loss?
Where do we find consolation?
What does it mean to create peace rather than merely wish for it?
How can beauty change the way we experience a difficult world?
These questions belong to no single religion or philosophy. They are part of being human. And music gives us a remarkable place in which to consider them together.’
THREE COMPOSERS. ONE ANCIENT TEXT.
At the center of the afternoon is a fascinating musical encounter.
Gabriel Fauré. Maurice Duruflé. Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Three composers from different generations each encountered the Pie Jesu, an ancient text asking for compassion and rest. What they created could hardly be more different.
Fauré finds extraordinary tenderness and stillness.
Duruflé brings the distant memory of Gregorian chant into the harmonic language of twentieth-century France.
Nearly four decades later, Andrew Lloyd Webber responds with an immediately direct melody that would become one of the most widely recognized passages of his Requiem.
The words endure. The musical language changes. And across generations, we hear human beings confronting many of the same questions that remain with us today.
FAURÉ’S REQUIEM
MUSIC THAT CHOOSES LIGHT
Fauré’s Requiem occupies a remarkable place among the great works of choral music.
Where many Requiem settings emphasize judgment, drama and fear, Fauré imagined something strikingly different. His music repeatedly moves toward tenderness, repose and light.
The great dramatic Dies irae found in many Requiems is largely absent. Instead, Fauré creates an extraordinary progression from the solemn opening through the intimate Pie Jesu, the darker confrontation of the Libera me, and finally In Paradisum, music that seems almost to become weightless.
More than a century after its creation, the work continues to speak to audiences far beyond the circumstances for which it was written. One need not share its religious tradition to understand its humanity. It asks us to contemplate loss without being consumed by it and to imagine that darkness need not have the final word.
A REQUIEM WOVEN INTO THE HISTORY OF CCS
Fauré’s Requiem is more than a work the Connecticut Choral Society has performed. Across more than a decade, it has become part of the ensemble’s own artistic history, music associated with remembrance, service and the enduring relationship between great art and community.
For CCS, bringing great music into the life of Western Connecticut has long carried a purpose beyond the concert hall. In 2014, the Society presented Fauré’s Requiem at First Congregational Church of Danbury as the centerpiece of For the Children: A Concert of Hope, a benefit concert presented on behalf of Family & Children’s Aid of Danbury, supporting an organization serving children and families throughout the region.
That occasion reflected a principle that continues to shape the Society today: artistic excellence and community responsibility are not separate ambitions, but complementary expressions of a shared civic life. Music can offer beauty, reflection and renewal while also bringing people together in service to their neighbors and strengthening the communities they call home.
That same year, CCS carried the Requiem to France, performing in Rouen as part of the 2014 Normandy Festival commemorations marking the 70th anniversary of D-Day, and in Paris at the historic Église de la Madeleine, the church so closely bound to Fauré’s professional life. There, the Society encountered the work within the cultural and historical landscape from which it emerged connecting an American chorus and its audiences to a larger inheritance of memory, sacrifice and shared humanity.
On November 8, that history comes home.
As CCS returns to Fauré’s Requiem in Western Connecticut, the performance becomes more than a return to one of the choral repertoire’s most cherished works. It renews a commitment carried across years and continents: to place music of enduring beauty at the heart of community life, and to foster a Western Connecticut in which culture, connection and service strengthen one another.
The setting is not Paris, Carnegie Hall or Lincoln Center.
It is Brookfield, Connecticut.
And that matters.
Because great music does not belong only to great cultural capitals.
It belongs wherever people gather to listen.
MEET THE ARTISTS:
The Connecticut Choral Society will be joined by an exceptional company of vocal and instrumental artists. Stay tuned for more info.
GREAT MUSIC. CLOSE TO HOME. OPEN TO EVERYONE.
Perhaps you attend concerts regularly.
Perhaps you have never heard a live choral performance.
Perhaps you know Fauré’s Requiem by heart.
Perhaps his name is completely new to you.
All are equally welcome.
There is no expensive ticket required to experience this performance.
Admission is offered with a $20 suggested donation at the door.
That accessibility is intentional.
The Connecticut Choral Society believes extraordinary artistic experiences should be part of the communities in which we live and that the future of cultural life in Western Connecticut depends upon opening doors, inviting new people inside, and creating experiences worth sharing.
Come with family.
Bring a friend or neighbor.
Bring someone who thinks classical music isn’t for them.
Or simply come by yourself and take a seat among us.
SOMETHING IS GROWING IN WESTERN CONNECTICUT
November 8 is one afternoon.
But it is also part of something larger.
Across Danbury, Bethel, Brookfield, Newtown and Sandy Hook, there is an opportunity to build a richer cultural life connecting extraordinary performances with schools, artists, businesses, restaurants, gathering places and the people who call this region home. We call that emerging vision the Cultural Corridor of Western Connecticut. It begins not with buildings or institutions, but with people.
People showing up.
People listening.
People bringing someone new.
People deciding that having great music, art and cultural life close to home matters.
That is how an audience becomes a community.
And how a community begins building something that can endure.
JOIN US NOVEMBER 8
CONNECTICUT CHORAL SOCIETY
Fauré Requiem
Sunday, November 8, 2026 | 3:00 PM
Valley Presbyterian Church
21 West Whisconier Road
Brookfield, CT 06804
$20 suggested donation at the door.
Approximately 90 minutes | No intermission
COME. LISTEN. BE PART OF SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL.