Welcome to Jen Cohen, Director of Music

CVUUS selected Jen Cohen of Rutland as our new part-time Music Director for 18 hours per week.  The Music Director leads our choir, helps accompany worship and coordinates other musicians.  They help shape weekly services and special seasonal services (such as:  Water Ingathering, Indigenous Weekend. Winter Solstice, Christmas Eve, Contra Dance events, Earth Day, June 19th, Pride March or Open Mic.). Together we explore music from various traditions and styles, and experiment with different ensembles to invite the congregation into a worship experience that enriches and celebrates life. We trust the Director of Music will inspire our minds and hearts with creative and thoughtful music that reflects our spiritual, cultural, and lifestyle diversity (Jewish, Agnostic, Christian, Buddhist, Pagan, Young, Not-so-young, Queer and Quirky).

The search team – Carol Harden, Revell Allen, Liam Battjes, Chris Murphy, Becky Strum, Elio Farley, Salem Singh, Annan Duquette-Hoffman, Kate Gridley, and Jay Harrington – actively promoted this open position, locally and nationally through the UUA.  The first applications were submitted in mid-June.  The team interviewed the most promising candidates in mid-July and CVUUS selected Jen by end of July.  This is a 12-month position with 12 Sundays off each year beginning in August 2024.  Dir of Music Job Description 2024

Opening Words from Jen

As your new music director, I want to take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Jennifer (Jen) Cohen. For the past three years I have served as music director at the Union Church in Proctor. Other experience includes teaching music in the public schools, playing keyboards for musical theater productions, and teaching private piano. I am a classically trained pianist who embraces many genres of music, including calypso, which I have been playing on steel pan for a number of years. I am the director of the Panhandlers, a twelve-person community steel band that performs around Vermont and New Hampshire.  I also teach a lot of groups how to play pan, and perhaps we will get a group going at CVUUS.

For the past 30 years I have lived in Rutland with my husband Barry, who plays bassoon and also plays the bass pans in my band. We have two daughters — Sam, who lives outside of Santa Barbara; and Lena, who lives in Brooklyn. I love to play tennis, and Barry and I enjoy cycling the roads of Vermont together.

My belief is that music has a wonderful and unique way of building community. Whether you are a member of the choir, or one who reluctantly picks up the hymnal, I’m interested in getting to know you, and hearing your ideas about the role of music at CVUUS. Together I think we can create a music program that challenges, nurtures, and inspires.

Let me know if you need anything else. Jen Cohen (music@cvuus.org)

Music Is a Vital Part of Congregational Life at CVUUS

Our 20+ person volunteer choir sings regularly at Sunday services and rehearses each week on Thursday evenings. Our House Band provides special music once per month at worship services, featuring piano, drums, bass, clarinet, saxophone, guitar, and more. CVUUS frequently hosts rehearsals and concerts for local groups like the Wellspring Hospice Singers, the Middlebury College Community Chorus, Middlebury Opera Company, Point Counterpoint, and many others. Our sanctuary features a wonderful Steinway Model L piano which is at the center of our music program. We also have a modest Yamaha drum kit, which livens up music when the House Band plays. The acoustics of the room are wonderfully balanced for all kinds of music making!

We continue to be a home for community music making of all kinds. Reach out if you are interested in hosting your community arts-focused event with us. Contact office@cvuus.org to schedule your event or rehearsal.

Choir

Our thriving choir is open to all—we are always accepting new members!  Reading music is helpful but not required. We rehearse on Thursday evenings from 5:30-7 pm and Sunday mornings at 9 am when we sing at worship (usually 3x per month and off for summer).  We take off for the summer and resume with a gathering retreat in late August or early September. Contact office@cvuus.org or music@cvuus.org to be added to the choir list. Look for email from choir@cvuus.org (and check your spam folders for initial ones) or Choir Connections.

Watch and listen to our choir lead service on June 16.

Watch and listen to our choir lead the congregation in a round, Tom Chapin’s “This Pretty Planet.”

Watch and listen our choir and House Band perform the African-American spiritual, “Ev’ry Time Ah Feel Duh Spirit,” arranged by our very own congregant, Dr. François S. Clemmons.

See our choir in rehearsal during the pandemic, distanced and masked, rehearsing hymn #131 “Love Will Guide Us.”

Choir led a joyful service on June 5, 2022. Watch it here.

Music Ministry Team

Carol Harden, Revell Allen, Chris Murphy, YOU?! Contact office@cvuus.org if you have ideas or want to join our ministry.

Farewell Ronnie: Our beloved music director Ronnie Romano left CVUUS at the end of June but will remain in Middlebury directing music at the Congregational Church of Middlebury UCC and continuing to lead the Middlebury Community Chorus with rehearsals resuming on Sunday nights at CVUUS on September 15. He can be reached at 201-388-4038 (text/call). Read Ronnie’s letter to us here: Music Director Announcement 5.5.24

Open Mic Nights & Contra Dances

Music Ministry hosts open mic nights and contra dances periodically. Thanks to all who participated in recent Open Mic Nights in mid-March. We enjoyed Poppy Rees as a superb emcee, performances by young pianists, storytellers – serious and comic, plus singers, banjo tunes, poetry, and refreshments from our choir members. Special thanks to our wonderful organizer Carol Harden who performed for the 50 to 60 on viola. Thanks to all who come to our Contra Dances in the Sanctuary, including one of Nov 22, 2024.  Like before, we did traditional and new dances in any of several formations — circle dances, contra dances, longways sets (like a Virginia Reel), and squares.  All dances were taught before they are danced, and called during the dancing.  Richard Hopkins called. Live music was provided by a group of players associated with CVUUS in various ways, led by Kai Fukuda and Carol Harden. Admission was free but contributions were gratefully accepted. No previous experience was necessary. You could come  by yourself, with a friend, or with a group. And many did!  All dances were called in a gender-free fashion.  Most involved having a partner for that dance.  Some dances have identical roles for the person on the left and the one on the right; for others we used the terms Larks (on the left) and Robins (on the right).  Anyone could ask anyone to dance.

Drumming Fills Our Spaces

In addition to our own drums, we’ve welcomed West African Dance class on Wednesday nights at 5:30 pm accompanied by lively drumming, piloted Korean drumming classes and have stored the Opera Company of Middlebury’s timpani drums while Town Hall Theater was under construction. They’ll be back when the Opera Company orchestra returns for rehearsals.

Steel Drums Arrive

Our music director Jen Cohen is excited to bring her longtime passion for steel drums to us this year. She’s taught it at Middlebury Community Music School and other locations and will be teaching it in April to congregants who won her Radical Love Exchange offering, and potentially others. She brought her Panhandlers Steel Drum Band to our sanctuary for a Sounds of the Season Concert on Sunday Dec 8 at 1:30 pm. Kate Gridley assisted on bells. Over 50 came to hear joyful holiday tunes. Listen to one here.

Vespers

We experimented with candlelit evening services of contemplative Taize prayer and chanting led by Rev. Christina and Ronnie Romano. We’ll pause until Fall when we hope to rotate between CVUUS and the Congregational Church of Middlebury UCC.

Noontime Concert Series

We experimented with new Noontime Concert Series in the Sanctuary offering varied musical styles and performers. For Thurs May 23 we had Borderlands Woodwind Quartet led by Richard Hopkins playing six short pieces by diverse composers — Bach, Monteverdi, Shostakovich, a couple of others and earlier we had the lively French Canadian folk singer trio Va-et-vient. Thanks for taking your lunch break by enjoying some live music!

Middlebury College Community Chorus

Middlebury College Community Chorus rehearsed at CVUUS on Wed and Sunday nights and resumed on Sunday nights at 7 pm in the fall. Thanks to those who came to our Faure Requiem spring concert on Mothers’ Day May 12 at 5 pm at Middlebury College’s Center for the Arts led by Ronnie Romano. It was magnificent, featuring several CVUUS choir members, as well as those from other churches and others who formed an amazing choral body of close to 90 voices. Listen to it here.

World-Class Musical Events

Opera Company of Middlebury Meet the Singers (of their adult spring opera) comes to CVUUS each spring. Their orchestra rehearses with us annually each spring.

Point Counterpoint Faculty Concert returns on Sat Aug 31, 7:30 pm in our sanctuary. Free.

Hiroya Tsukamoto Concert on Friday Aug 9, 2024 at 7 pm in our sanctuary. Sliding scale of $10-$30 per person. Come hear this amazing guitarist. Purchase tickets in advance here.

World Music Day

World Music Day, Friday June 21 (4-7) featured a sing-a-long led by the Counseling Service of Addison County’s Community Bridges program for World Music Day. This annual event since 1982 is held traditionally on the first day of summer as a way to  celebrate music and summer. Musicians register to perform at a venue of their choosing at makemusicday.org. You don’t need to register to participate. You could join in as your schedule permitted. Percussion instruments were provided or you could bring your own. Look for this event each first day of summer.

Music Links to Lift You

Here are a few music links to lift you during these uncertain times.

Bound to Love, Spirit of Justice

CVUUS Choir offered us songs composed by Amanda Udis-Kessler, a long time UU composer who invites us to share her music widely via her website queersacredmusic.com. https://www.facebook.com/lucytune/videos/10160691614827678 https://www.facebook.com/lucytune/videos/10160708012312678

How Sweet the Darkness of the Falling Leaf Moon

Liam Greenwood was inspired to create this piano recording accompanied by falling leaves along and on Otter Creek. Watch here.

Hope Lingers On

Look at what some CVUUS congregants have created with other Middlebury Community Chorus members https://youtu.be/cagvRHdMNXg

Lo How a Rose

CVUUS Choir at holiday time. https://www.facebook.com/lucytune/videos/10160783516697678

We Are

Look at what the UUA General Assembly created for online worship. Listen to We Are performed by Dr. Ysaÿe Barnwell and the UUA General Assembly 2020 virtual choir and Tomorrow. Expand it to full screen for full effect!

Wake Now My Senses

An old Irish melody with lyrics by Rev. Thomas Mikelson, a UU minister who died earlier this year. It’s often sung at the installation of ministers at a congregation or at ordinations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojptYH9yqFs

Just As Long As I Have Breath

A 17^th century tune with words by Alicia Carpenter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFGQA1Iw4HQ

Blessed Spirit of My Life

Starts out the same way and then turns another direction — a hymn looking back at what is a well-lived life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOKyNZyC0Ss

A Fierce Unrest

The least sung hymn in this list. Another old tune (1815) but with atheist lyrics by the 20^th century writer Don Maquis.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wepC6-JGlgU

Let It Be a Dance

Troubadour UU minister Ric Masten’s one famous song regularly makes the favorite and most hated lists among UU’s (the latter, usually, in congregations where it has been sung to death): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zv6dxVOn1A

We Laugh, We Cry

Just the first verse here of the four …. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQMgNJBZVFk.

We Would Be One

One of several hymns written to the Finnish composer Sibelius’s tune “Finlandia”.

Though I May Speak With Bravest Fire

Modern lyrics based on Biblical text to an old English tune called “Gift of Love” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXSI8krPwx0

Spirit of Life

At All Souls in Washington DC, they sing it in Spanish first. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LikvoIiN_bU

Listen to this sample of Chuck Miller’s wonderful postludes: