Choral Evensong in Eastertide

This coming Sunday, April 19, 2026, being the Third Sunday of Easter, at 4:00 pm, St. Luke's Episcopal Church hosts our monthly service of Choral Evensong. This service will feature canticles and an anthem by Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924), the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis in C Major, Op. 115 and the Easter anthem Ye choirs of new Jerusalem. The service also includes a popular recent setting of the canticle Phos Hilaron by British composer Owain Park (b. 1993) who is principal guest conductor of the BBC Singers and founder of the internationally acclaimed a cappella enemble The Gesualdo Six, for whom he composed this setting. Preces and Responses will be a setting by the Benoit, Mississippi native Robert Jennings Powell (1932-2025).

The Anglo-Irish composer Charles Villiers Stanford was among the premiere British

Charles Villiers Stanford

composers of the fin de siecle period bridging the 19th and 20th centuries. Born in Dublin and educated at Cambridge University, where he was appointed organist of Trinity College while still an undergraduate, Stanford went on to study organ and composition in Leipzig and Berlin. His appointment in the early 1880s and lifetime of service as professor of composition and conductor at the Royal College of Music meant he became a profound influence on an entire generation of British composers as their composition teacher: among his pupils were Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, Herbert Howells, Samuel Coleridge Taylor, John Ireland, and Frank Bridge, among a host of other noteworthy composers of the 20th century. Stanford's Opus 115, which includes settings of the canticles for the Eucharist and the canticles for Evensong, was his last achievement in this genre, for which he composed a number of important and well-loved settings. His magnificent anthem Ye choirs of new Jerusalem sets an English translation by Robert Bridges (1814-1868) of the medieval Latin hymn text Chorus novae Jerusalem written by St. Fulbert of Chartres (c. 952-1028) when he was Bishop of Chartres to be sung at Easter services.

Owain Park

Owain Park's setting of the c. 4th century Greek hymn for lamplighting, the Phos Hilaron, as translated by John Keble (1792-1866), nods to an Eastern Orthodox tradition of unaccompanied choir humming or vocalizing a chord progression while a soloist chants the text of the hymn. The soloist for this piece on Sunday will be soprano Adrienne Wagster, one of our staff singers. The Phos Hilaron was formally included in the traditional canticles for Evensong in the Episcopal Church's Book of Common Prayer in 1979, inspiring some wonderful new settings of this profound and ancient Christian hymn which we have been exploring in our Evensong services this year.

The St. Luke's Evensong Choir is a ministry of St. Luke's Episcopal Church, comprised of our parish choir together with members of the local community who enjoy participating in our Choral Evensong and exploring the rich choral repertoire composed for this globally popular traditional Anglican service.