MESSIAH SING (Parts ll & lll)
Sunday, March 29, 2026 – 3:00 PM
Valley Presbyterian Church
21 W. Whisconier Road
Brookfield, CT 06804
Please join us for our MESSIAH SING on Sunday, March 29, 2026 at 3:00 PM. Under the direction of Eric Dale Knapp, this open sing of Händel’s Messiah (Parts II & III) is presented by the Valley Music Series and is a tour de force with the Connecticut Choral Society.
Whether you’re a singer or a classical music aficionado our annual sing-ins are for you! This is a great opportunity for all singers to come and sing with the chorus for the day; or for classical music lovers to come enjoy an afternoon of music! It’s also a great way to learn more about the Valley Music Series and Connecticut Choral Society and how you can join or help with our community outreach.
There is a $20 suggested donation at the door to attend/sing. Scores will be provided. In the spirit of generosity as demonstrated by Händel‘s lifelong support of the UK’s first children’s charity, we will donate proceeds received at the door to Association of Religious Communities in Danbury, CT. This is a wonderful opportunity to enjoy beautiful music and support a local Danbury organization, too!
CHORAL ARTISTS
Arijana Lempke, soprano
Jessica Ann Best, mezzo-soprano
Nicholas Simpson, tenor
Christopher Grundy, bass-baritone
Linda Sweetman-Waters, organ
Eric Dale Knapp, conductor
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Arijana Lempke, soprano
Arijana Lempke is a native of Naugatuck, Connecticut, and serves as soprano section leader for the Connecticut Choral Society. She holds a Master of Music in Opera Performance from Arizona State University and a bachelor’s degree from James Madison University. She has appeared in operatic productions with the Mittelsächsische Theater Freiberg in Germany and performed at venues including the Schumann House in Zwickau and Lauenstein Castle. As soloist, Arijana has appeared with the Connecticut Choral Society in works by Mozart, Vivaldi, Fauré, and Handel, and performed the soprano role in Carmina Burana. She currently cantors for the Diocese of Hartford and the Diocese of Bridgeport.
Jessica Ann Best, mezzo-soprano
Jessica Ann Best is a versatile mezzo-soprano whose career encompasses opera, concert, recital, musical theater, and jazz. She has appeared with such organizations as LA Opera, Opera Tampa, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Florida Orchestra, Gotham Chamber Opera, and the Savannah Voice Festival, and has been recognized for both contemporary and standard repertoire. Her work includes premieres of new operas, performances at Carnegie Hall, and appearances in programs devoted to the Great American Songbook. A dedicated teacher and director as well as performer, she continues to mentor singers and maintain an active private voice studio. She holds a Master of Music in Vocal Performance and Literature and a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance and Literature from Nazareth College.
Nicholas Simpson, tenor
Nicholas Simpson is an award-winning tenor acclaimed for performances of brilliance, power, and expressive immediacy. His repertoire ranges from Broadway to grand opera and major concert works, and his appearances have taken him across the United States and abroad. He has been heard in such leading roles as Cavaradossi in Tosca, Don José in Carmen, Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly, Bacchus in Ariadne auf Naxos, and Almaviva in The Barber of Seville, alongside frequent appearances as tenor soloist in Handel’s Messiah. A devoted educator, he also presents masterclasses and mentors young singers in conservatory and professional settings. Mr. Simpson holds a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish from the University of Missouri and a Master of Music in Voice from Manhattan School of Music.
Christopher Grundy, bass-baritone
Christopher Grundy has performed widely throughout North America and Europe as a soloist in opera, oratorio, and recital. His operatic repertoire includes leading roles in Don Giovanni, Aleko, The Merry Widow, Der Rosenkavalier, and Die Fledermaus, while his work as an oratorio soloist spans major sacred masterworks from Bach and Handel to Mozart, Mendelssohn, Fauré, Duruflé, and Britten. Especially devoted to song literature, he has cultivated a broad recital repertoire and recorded works by both historic and contemporary composers. Dr. Grundy holds a Doctor of Music degree from Indiana University and serves as Director of Choral Programs at Sacred Heart University.
Linda Sweetman-Waters, organ
Linda Sweetman-Waters is an organist and collaborative pianist valued for her artistry, steadiness, and sensitive support of singers and ensembles. Especially at home in sacred repertoire, she brings clarity, warmth, and a finely shaped sense of line to both continuo and accompanying roles. Her playing reflects the organ’s enduring place at the heart of choral music: sustaining the musical structure while enriching its color and resonance. Linda anchors the MESSIAH SING with grace, poise, and musical integrity.
Eric Dale Knapp, conductor
Eric Dale Knapp is a conductor and artistic leader known for uniting musical discipline with a deeply human sense of purpose. As Artistic Director of Orchestra Nexus, Connecticut Choral Society and a longtime presence in the region’s choral and orchestral life, he has shaped performances that connect great repertoire to community, reflection, and shared experience. His work is grounded in the belief that masterworks are not only artistic achievements, but also acts of gathering, capable of inviting listeners into heightened attention, generosity, and common feeling. Mr. Knapp leads MESSIAH SING in the spirit of Handel’s enduring vision: clarity, uplift, and joy offered in service of the public good.
ABOUT THE PROGRAM
GEORGE FRIDERIC HÄNDEL
Born: February 23, 1685, Halle, Brandenburg, Germany – Prussia
Died: April 14, 1759, Westminster – London, United Kingdom
MESSIAH HWV 56
Parts II & III
The Glorious History of Handel’s Messiah
Jonathan Kandell, Smithsonian Magazine, December 2009
A musical rite of the holiday season, the Baroque-era oratorio still awes listeners more than 250 years after the composer’s death. George Frideric Handel’s Messiah was originally an Easter offering. It burst onto the stage of Musick Hall in Dublin on April 13, 1742. The audience swelled to a record 700. Handel composed Messiah in an astounding interlude, somewhere between three and four weeks in August and September 1741. “He would literally write from morning to night,” says Sarah Bardwell of the Handel House Museum in London. The text was prepared in July by the prominent librettist, Charles Jennens, and was intended for an Easter performance the following year. “I hope [Handel] will lay out his whole Genius & Skill upon it, that the Composition may excel all his former Compositions, as the Subject excels every other Subject,” Jennens wrote to a friend.
There were several reasons for the choice of Dublin for Messiah’s debut. Handel had been downcast by the apathetic reception that London audiences had given his works the previous season. He did not want to risk another critical failure, especially with such an unorthodox piece. Other Handel oratorios had strong plots anchored by dramatic confrontations between leading characters. But Messiah offered the loosest of narratives: the first part prophesied the birth of Jesus Christ; the second exalted his sacrifice for humankind; and the final section heralded his Resurrection.
Dublin was one of the fastest-growing, most prosperous cities in Europe, with a wealthy elite eager to display its sophistication and the economic clout to stage a major cultural event. “So it was a great advantage for Handel to make the voyage to Dublin to try out his new work, and then bring it back to London,” says Keates, comparing the composer to Broadway producers who tried out plays in New Haven before staging them in New York City.
There is little doubt about Handel’s own fondness for the work. His annual benefit concerts for his favorite charity—London’s Foundling Hospital, a home for abandoned and orphaned children—always included Messiah. And, in 1759, when he was blind and in failing health, he insisted on attending an April 6 performance of Messiah at the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden. Eight days later, Handel died at home.
Handel was a Governor and benefactor of the Foundling Hospital in London, an orphanage for poor and destitute children. To raise funds, he conducted Messiah and continued to do so for every year until his death in 1759. In total, he personally conducted roughly 36 performances of Messiah. The annual performances of Messiah provided vital sources of income for the Hospital and raised thousands of British pounds for relief on the streets. Charles Burney, an eighteenth century music historian, remarked that Handel’s Messiah “fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and fostered the orphan.” Another writer wrote, “Perhaps no other work has so largely contributed to the relief of human suffering.” His total estate was assessed at 20,000 pounds, which made him a millionaire by modern standards. He left the bulk of his fortune to charities and much of the remainder to friends, servants and his family in Germany.
Amassing a fortune through his music and shrewd investments in London’s burgeoning stock market, Handel donated munificently to orphans, retired musicians and the ill. (He gave his portion of his Messiah debut proceeds to a debtors’ prison and hospital in Dublin.) A sense of humanity imbues his music as well—a point often made by conductors who compare Handel with Bach. But where Bach’s oratorios exalted God, Handel was more concerned with the feelings of mortals. “Even when the subject of his work is religious, Handel is writing about the human response to the divine,” says conductor Bicket. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Messiah. “The feelings of joy you get from the Hallelujah choruses are second to none,” says conductor Cummings. “And how can anybody resist the Amen chorus at the end? It will always lift your spirits if you are feeling down.”
The verses used as text for Messiah were assembled by Handel’s friend Charles Jennens, a wealthy supporter of the arts. They were drawn from three parts of the Bible: Old testament prophesies of the Messiah’s birth; New Testament stories of the birth of Christ, his death, and his resurrection; and verses relating ultimately to Judgement Day, with the final chorus text drawn from the Book of Revelation.
Jennens described his work as “a meditation of our Lord as Messiah in Christian thought and belief.” But only the first third of the work was about the birth of Jesus. The second act covers the death of Jesus and the third focused on his resurrection. As such, the piece was originally conceived as a work for Easter and was premiered in the spring during the Lent season.
In an age when illiteracy was widespread and written copies of the Bible were expensive and rare, Handel became excited about Jennens’ idea. Handel pioneered the “oratorio” a musical composition designed to teach the scriptures by setting them to music. He wanted to take the message of the scriptures to the streets and specifically with the intent that they would be heard in secular theaters. The church was outraged and protested, but Handel persisted even though doing this also meant little or no profit from his endeavors.
At the end of his manuscript Handel wrote the letters “SDG”, meaning Soli Deo Gloria or “To God alone the glory”. Handel wanted people to glorify God when they listen to or perform Messiah.
MESSIAH SING BENEVOLENCE
Area Religious Communities
Ari Rosenberg, Executive Director
Danbury, CT
In the tradition of Handel’s Messiah, the Valley Music Series offers MESSIAH SING as a benevolent act in support of the Association of Religious Communities (ARC). ARC is Danbury-based interfaith organization founded in 1974. The organization is dedicated to advancing peace, justice, and human dignity throughout the greater Danbury region and neighboring western Connecticut communities.
All donations received at the door today will help sustain ARC’s vital outreach: feeding families through Comida, providing emergency assistance for basic needs, helping individuals and families secure stable housing, assisting refugees and immigrants in the work of resettlement. In addition ARC provides support for children in the Danbury schools through volunteer mentorship, and responding with compassion and resolve to the realities of domestic violence and hate. ARC’s mission is at once practical and deeply humane, joining immediate service with enduring moral purpose. www.arcforpeace.org
MESSIAH SING stands not only as an event, but as an offering of shared hope: a musical expression of charity, fellowship, and the enduring dignity of every human life
A note about the Messiah and the Lily of the Valley flower: Our event image features a Lily of the Valley flower, which has a strong Christian symbolism as these lilies represent the tears shed by Mary at the foot of the cross. Händel’s setting of the Jennens’ libretto vividly reminds us of the Passion, Resurrection and Ascension according to the King James Bible.
For more information, please visit Connecticut Choral Society at www.ctchoralsociety.com or Valley Music Series at https://www.valleypresct.org/messiah-sing-32926.html. Make sure to Like/Follow CCS on FB & Insta @connecticutchoralsociety and VMS on FB & Insta at @valleymusicseries.
We look forward to seeing you there!