The Penobscot Bay Singers will perform Randall Thompson's sequence of sacred choruses based on texts from the "Book of Isaiah": "The Peaceable Kingdom", on March 27 at the Belfast Methodist Church at 7 pm and on March 28 the Mt View High School Clifford Performing Arts Center at 3:00. Joining the Belfast-area chorus will be the Mt. View Chamber Choir, led by David Stevenson, in a program of a cappella pieces including spirituals, modern and Renaissance sacred works.

Richard Dostie, Music Director of the Penobscot Bay Singers, will direct them in "the Peaceable Kingdom", by Randall Thompson. The work was commissioned by the League of Composers for the Harvard Glee Club and Radcliffe Choral Society in 1936. Thompson was inspired by the familiar painting by Edward Hicks' painting illustrating "Isaiah" XI:6-9, which begins: "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them." However, he chose to begin the eight choruses with texts that warn of the dire results of wickedness. With dramatic word-music painting he whips the music into a frenzy of syncopated antiphonal dissonances before leading the singers into the deep, dark, but calmer chords of despair and finally to rich, tranquil, and then triumphant harmonies and rhythms describing the promises of "...ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the fields shall clap their hands." The singers are divided into two choruses for several of the pieces for the antiphonal effects. Linnea Johnson is the accompanist.

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