From November 15- December 12, 2009, art works by the monks of the abbey are on display at the Miriam Hall Art Gallery at Anna Maria College in Paxton, MA. The gallery is open at the following times:
Miriam Hall Art Gallery Hours: November 15-December 12, 2009
Monday-Friday: 10:00 a.m. -12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. -4:00 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday: 2:00 p.m. -4:00 p.m.
(Gallery will be closed Wednesday, November 25 through Sunday, November 29)
Saturday, December 11: 10:00 a.m. -4:00 p.m.
Sunday, December 12: 2:00 p.m. -6:00 p.m. (final day)
Items on display include watercolor, tempera, gouache, collage, pottery, photography, and hand-painted icons. A catalog of the works can be found here. Thumbnails of the works begin on p. 6 of the catalog. The gallery is located at 50 Sunset Lane, Paxton, MA. For directions click here.
On Sunday afternoon, members of the Abbey Schola performed a concert of Medieval and Renaissance choral music with the Bel Canto Choir of Anna Maria College at the Worcester Art Museum in the beautiful Renaissance Court, which houses several splendid mosaics of the Hellenistic and Roman periods, most notably the Hunt mosaic, which covers about 500 square feet of floor space.
Throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance composers used the chant of the Church's liturgy as a foundation for their compositions. The pieces of the program were chosen to illustrate the influence of chant on liturgical music from some of the earliest Christian monophonic chants, the Ambrosian chant of Milan, to late Renaissance five-voice polyphony based on Gregorian chant.
Opera singer and friend of the abbey, Peter Campbell, also sang with the choir and performed a solo rendition of A madre do que Livrou, from the Cantigas de Santa Maria compiled by the Spanish king Alphonso X. He was accompanied by Jamie Thiesing on violoncello.
