For our return to in-person singing, Illuminati gave a sold-out performance of two profoundly religious works by avowed agnostics, Gabriel Fauré's Requiem in D minor, Op. 48, and Ralph Vaughan Williams' Five Mystical Songs. The former is an idiosyncratic setting of the Catholic Mass for the Dead, and the latter sets a series of poems by the deeply-pious seventeenth-century Anglican priest George Herbert. The sentiments they express transcend doctrine; their music offers meaning in dark times.

We will stream this concert on April 3 at 7:00 PM. If you order a ticket, we will send you a link to the premiere no later than the end of the day Friday, April 1.

"The Fauré Requiem... was a set work for A-level and I took myself along to a local amateur performance to get to know it better. I remember experiencing an uncanny feeling that it would be a dear friend and companion on my life’s journey (it is). To this day tears come to my eyes when I conduct the In paradisum."

—John Rutter, Anthologising: Sacred Choruses, posted October 29, 2018

"Five Mystical Songs is, for this writer, one of those Vaughan Williams works that, when 1 play it, makes me feel like rushing into the street and dragging complete strangers into the living room and not letting them go until they admit that I got me flowers and Love bade me welcome are the most beautiful things they have ever heard."

—Stephen Connock, Journal of the RVW Society, No. 7, February 2000, p. 13