June 17: Tours – Eastern Europe 2008, Vienna

Jon Curtis Season of the Day, SOTD - June

According to our tour brochure, “Over the years, the greatest classical composers graced Vienna with their presence and compositions.”  And now that includes the Allan Petker Chorale!

But we learned a lesson with our Vienna concert.  When your concert is in the middle of the day, at a big church in the middle of town, St. Peter’s Catholic Church, it seems quite prestigious.  But if it were not for our “groupies” and a couple of tourists we would have had almost no audience.

We have been blessed with a grand collection of spouses, parents, siblings, children, and friends who have come along with us on the tours.  They’ve been especially helpful with creating the tour videos.

Today’s video is Daniel Gawthrop’s “Sing Me to Heaven.”  It begins in St. John Beneath the Cliff, but is mostly from St. Peters in Vienna.

A bit of unintentional coincidence. YouTube has a system that automatically offers three potential images from which to choose the thumbnail for a video.  Many of you may recognize Suzanne Young in the thumbnail below singing “Sing Me to Heaven.” This tour was her first time singing with us, but the thumbnail foreshadows her brief time with us. She sang with Consort from 2008 to 2012, joining in this tour, and the Baltics tour, before unexpectedly completing her journey to heaven in 2012.  It is a most fitting song to dedicate to Suzanne.
Text is by Jane Griner:

In my heart’s sequestered chambers lie truths stripped of poet’s gloss.
Words alone are vain and vacant and my heart is mute.
In response to aching silence memory summons half-heard voices,
and my soul finds primal eloquence and wraps me in song.

If you would comfort me, sing me a lullaby.
If you would win my heart, sing me a love song.
If you would mourn me and bring me to God,
sing me a requiem, sing me to heaven.

Touch in me all love and passion, pain and pleasure,
grief and comfort; love and passion, pain and pleasure.

Sing me a lullaby, a love song, a requiem.
Love me, comfort me, bring me to God.
Sing me a love song, sing me to heaven.