Garden Choir hosts a concert of love

Love can take different forms — and these many forms are  the inspiration behind the Garden Choir’s upcoming Fall concert. 

The concert — titled “A Tapestry of Love: Featuring Trotta’s ‘For a Breath of Ecstasy’” — will take place from 6 to 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 10, at First United Methodist Church Orlando, 142 E. Jackson St., Orlando. The concert will include performances by the Garden Choir, the Garden Choir’s Voci del Cuore group, Olympia High School’s Bella Voce and the University of Central Florida’s Women’s Choir. 

“‘A Tapestry of Love’ is going to cover just about all the facets of love,” said Dr. Jeffery Redding, who is the artistic director of the Garden Choir and director of choral activities at West Orange High. “Each choir will sing a different piece that could be (about) love and faith; love and relationships; love and death; love and whatever.”

The featured performance of the evening will be a performance of Michael John Trotta’s “For a Breath of Ecstasy,” by the Garden Choir’s Voci del Cuore group. Voci del Cuore — which is Italian for voices of the heart — is the Garden Choir’s auditioned chamber choir group of professional-level musicals. The Garden Choir as a whole is an adult, non-auditioned chorus of more than 100 members.

Trotta’s “For a Breath of Ecstasy” consists of seven songs. Each song draws text from the book “Love Songs,” which is an anthology of poetry written by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Sara Teasdale. A quartet of musicians from the Orlando Symphony — consisting of string instruments, oboe and piano — will be performing Trotta’s work with Voci del Cuore, Redding said.

“Each of the movements of ‘For a Breath of Ecstasy’ chronicles Teasdale’s search for solace amidst life’s many storms,” Redding said. “The tapestry of different vocal forces set against the backdrop of oboe and strings reveals moments of yearning, love, joy and peace.”

Christine Le is the assistant director of the Garden Choir, sings in Voci del Cuore and is also the head chorus director at Olympia High School. She got involved with the Garden Choir about three years ago and has served as assistant director for about two years. As a choir director and teacher, Le got involved with the Garden Choir so she “could be on the other side of the podium.” 

She said this concert will be the first time that Olympia’s Bella Voce performs with the Garden Choir.

“Bella Voce is the advanced treble, or women’s, group at Olympia High School,” Le said. “We just just got invited to perform at the Florida ACDA (American Choral Directors Association) convention, and we are going to pull two or three of the songs from that selection to perform at (A Tapestry of Love).”

Olympia senior Jennifer Carneiro and freshman Laurel Deaton are both in Bella Voce. They said they are looking forward to performing with the Garden Choir at “A Tapestry of Love.”

“I’m so excited,” Deaton said. “It’s going to be so amazing to perform with them (Garden Choir) because we look up to them. We aspire to be them. They’re amazing, and it’s such an honor that they chose us to sing with them.”

“I’ve heard Mrs. Le talk about the Garden Choir often, and I know that they’ve done so many songs that I’ve loved,” Carneiro said. “I’m really excited. … I definitely see myself joining Garden Choir if I decide to stay in Orlando (after graduation).”

Deaton added she hopes their performance will provide insight and guidance to the audience.

“We sing not for us,” she said. “We sing to change the lives of others, and that’s our motto: we strive to touch lives. That’s what we try to do with our music”

Similar to Deaton’s sentiment, Redding said a goal of the concert — much like his own overall goal with the Garden Choir — is to inspire.

“We’re not trying to sing to impress you,” he said. “We want to sing to inspire you.”