09 Mar Telluride Choral Society: SpringSing, “Reflection and Remembrance,” 3/20 & 3/22!
Performances of the Telluride Choral Society’s (TCS) Springing 2026 take place Friday, March 2o, 7 p.m. and Sunday, March 22, 4 p.m. at Christ Church. Tickets are $20 for adults; $10 for children at the door.
Go here for more about the Telluride Choral Society.
“‘In her book ‘Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There,’ meditation teacher Sylvia Boorstein reminds us that in a world constantly pushing us to do more, move faster, and fix whatever’s in front of us, but there is real value in simply stopping for a moment and paying attention. The upcoming Telluride Choral Society program grows out of that idea: “Reflection and Remembrance” is an invitation to pause, look back, look inside, and consider who we are, what matters to us, and how we sit in relationship to the world around us,” explains TCS’s adult musical director Hal Adler.
Yes, there something almost countercultural about Boorstein’s injunction — the deliberate choice to stop, to do nothing, to let the mind just be for a moment.
In a culture of constant input and instant response, that quality of attention has become genuinely rare. We skim. We react. We half-listen while composing our reply. The capacity to simply be present with something — a person, a feeling, a moment — without immediately processing it for utility is quietly disappearing. Boorstein’s invitation is to recover it.
In fact, what we discover when you go quiet in spring — about what we want, what we have outgrown, what we are finally ready for — becomes the seed of everything that follows. We can’t skip that step and get the same flower.
The going inside is not a detour from the journey. It is a journey beginning.
And, with TCS’s upcoming SpringSing, it is a new beginning set to the sound of music.
“Our program invites us to take a look back and a look inside. It gives us an opportunity to reflect on who we are, what’s important to us and how we sit, in relationship to the world around us,” continues Hal.
The music evokes a certain state of mind, from the rousing bluegrass a cappella “Fishers of Men” to the contemplative and settling Gregorian-like chant of “Beata Viscera,” but the words within the songs of this program are what really prompted the program title.
“Billy Joel’s ‘And so it Goes’ speaks like a journal entry any of us could write about the depths of what it really means to be in love and give yourself to another. ‘World O World’ (Jacob Collier – Camp) is a meditation on one person’s relationship to love, the world around them and impermanence,” continues Hal.
“Dirait-On” by Morten Lauridsen – the title loosely translates as “so they say” – sets a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke that reflects on beauty, self-containment, and the mysterious relationship between the inner and outer self. Rilke’s rose appears perfectly complete in itself, suggesting that what we most deeply are may already be present, quietly unfolding.
Memory and place also run quietly through the program.
“The beloved Irish song ‘Danny Boy’ carries the ache of parting and the enduring hope of reunion. In ‘Abide with Me,’ arranged by Moses Hogan, we hear a timeless prayer for presence, comfort, and light in moments of uncertainty, while ‘Caledonia’ by Dougie MacLean reflects on the deep pull of home and the ways our journeys ultimately bring us back to what matters most,” concludes Hal.
There is a good reason people describe certain music as making them cry in a way that feels good — releases rather than wounds. Spring and music both facilitate that kind of productive emotional release.
Through folk song, prayer, poetry, and reflection, TCS’s SpringSing 2026 invites us to pause, remember where we come from, consider who and what we love, and reflect on who we are becoming.
In the context of SpringSing, the season and music give our interior lives permission to thaw.
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