(Belfast, ME) 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 Saturday, March 27th at the Belfast Methodist Church at 7:00 pm and on Sunday, March 28th the Mount View High School Clifford Performing Arts Center at 3:00 pm. Joining the Belfast-area chorus will be the Mount View Chamber Choir, led by David Stevenson, in a program of a capella pieces including spirituals, modern and Renaissance sacred works.

Richard Dostie, Music Director of the Penobscot Bay Singers, will direct the chorus 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, Thompson 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.

The Singers, now in their 36th season of performing choral music in the Belfast area, are excited about performing in the new auditorium at the new Mount View High School and pleased to be again sharing the program with the much-loved Mount View Chamber Choir. A $12 donation is suggested for the concert. The Penobscot Bay Singers is a 501(c)(3) corporation sustained by member dues, fund raising, concert donations and help from the community of friends. For more information and the dates for the PBS's June Pops concert, please email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or write to The Penobscot Bay Singers, PO Box 5, Belfast, Maine, 04915.

In Joint Concert with Mount View Chamber Choir

(Belfast, ME) 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 Saturday, March 27th at the Belfast Methodist Church at 7:00 pm and on Sunday, March 28th the Mount View High School Clifford Performing Arts Center at 3:00 pm. Joining the Belfast-area chorus will be the Mount View Chamber Choir, led by David Stevenson, in a program of a capella pieces including spirituals, modern and Renaissance sacred works.

February 17th through March 7th.

(Bangor, ME) This critically acclaimed adaptation by George C. Wolfe of three stories by Zora Neale Hurston makes its Maine premiere during Black History Month. Hurston's evocative prose and Wolfe's unique theatrical style blend to create an evening of theater that celebrates the human spirit's ability to overcome and endure. Utilizing the blues, choral narrative, and dance, the three tales focus on men and women trapped inside the laughin' kind of lovin' kind of hurtin' kind of pain that comes from being human.

The show features three pre-World War II vignettes of African American life filtered through Hurston's black, ornery and feminist sensibility has class, wit and passion.

Formore information or to purchase tickets, please visit the Penobscot Theatre Company website.

Concerts in Searsport and Belfast

Help Preserve Choral Music in Maine

Please consider making a donation to cover the Penobscot Bay Singers' increasing operating expenses.

Founded in 1973 by Robert Coller, the Penobscot Bay Singers have been performing throughout the Maine Midcoast area for 37 seasons, bringing fine choral music to several communities.

Members gather weekly from Waldo and Knox County areas throughout the season to rehearse in preparation for winter, spring and summer concerts.

The Singers are directed by Richard M. Dostie, a charter member who is a native of Fairfield and a graduate of Middlebury College. He is also organist at Penney Memorial Union Baptist Church in Augusta and is active as a jazz and show musician in the Mount Desert and Midcoast areas.

Performances are October 21st through November 5th.

(Bangor, ME) This deliciously goofy revue is one of the most popular and successful musicals in recent memory, centering on four young, eager male singers killed in a car crash in the 1950s on the way to their first big concert. They become miraculously revived for the posthumous chance to fulfill their dreams and perform the show that never was.

Singing in the closest of harmony, squabbling boyishly over the smallest intonations and executing their charmingly outlandish choreography with over-zealous precision, the “Plaids” are a guaranteed smash, with a program of beloved songs and delightful patter that keeps audiences rolling in the aisles when they're not humming along to some of the great nostalgic pop hits of the '50s.

For more information or to purchase tickets, visit the Penobscot Theatre website.

September 15th through October 20th.

(Searsport, ME) "Painting the Maine Waterfront," curated by Carl Little, features the work of seven contemporary artists.

"The working waterfront has captivated artists for centuries," notes Mr. Little. "Here in Maine, the subject holds great appeal to painters, both for the wonderful range of motifs but also because they realize the working waterfront is disappearing."

(Image: Detail of “Crimson Glow - South Bristol” by Philip Frey)

Carl Little is the author of Paintings of Maine, Winslow Homer and the Sea and other books and is a regular contributor to Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors and Working Waterfront.

September 2nd through September 20th.

(Bangor, ME) To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the film adaptation that made Robert Harling’s play a modern classic, we are thrilled to open our 36th season with this award-winning comic drama which chronicles the friendship of a group of gossipy southern ladies in a small-town beauty parlor. Alternately hilarious and touching, in the end, this work deeply reveals the strength and purposefulness which underlies the antic banter of its characters.

For more information or to purchase tickets, please visit the Penobscot Theatre Company website.

Historian and author Bill Bunting will bring Maine's seafaring Sewall Family to life, along with tales of shipwrecks, mutinies, cannibals, widows, lawsuits, and miserable weather, on Friday, July 24, at 7:00 pm in Searsport. The event, which is free, is jointly sponsored by Left Bank Books and the Penobscot Marine Museum and will be held in the Museum's Main Street Gallery at 40 East Main Street. The community (except for pirates!) is warmly invited.

Bunting is a master storyteller and the author of six classic works of New England history. His newest book, Live Yankees: The Sewalls and Their Ships, recently published by Tilbury House Press and the Maine Maritime Museum, is the fascinating biography of a family, a business and also an era, combining first-person accounts from the Sewalls and their captains with Bunting’s extraordinary research and graceful narration. For more than century, from 1827 through 1932, the Sewalls built and managed a fleet of more than 100 merchant vessels, mostly deepwater square-riggers sailing out of Bath, which established the family as that city's preeminent residents. Their ships were among the most profitable in the world in a business that was highly competitive, and often cut-throat, despite a veneer of formality and manners. On one level, their story is a tale of seafaring, shipbuilding and the maritime trades through the 19th century and into the early 20th; on a broader level, it is a study of Maine capitalism and modernization as the world shifted from square-riggers to the steamship era. Although the Sewalls invested in railroads and other ventures, even dabbling in politics, it is in the maritime world that they are best remembered. And it was eventually their fate to draw the curtain on that world, although they resisted mightily to the end.

For more information about Friday's talk and slide show, or to reserve signed copies of Live Yankees or any of Mr. Bunting's other books, please call the Left Bank Bookshop at 548-6400. For more information about the Museum's weekly schedule, please call the Penobscot Marine Museum at 548-2529.

"IT'S A GRAND NIGHT FOR SINGING"

JUNE 12 & 13, BOAT HOUSE IN BELFAST

7 p.m. Admission $10

New Exhibits and Exciting Events Await Museum Visitors

The museum's Main Street Gallery welcomes visitors with a new exhibit of historic photographs from Atlantic Fisherman, a monthly publication informed commercial fishermen about new designs, gear and catches and provided historical articles and profiles of prominent fishing captains.

Another new exhibit, "Souvenirs from the Orient", originated with Maine sea captains who traveled to the Asia in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The exhibit includes exotic costumes and masks as well as Chinese children’s clothing and shoes carefully preserved by the families of the ships' captains.

The Penobscot Marine Museum was founded in 1936 and is Maine’s oldest maritime museum and comprises structures, artifacts, exhibits and interpreters tell the stories of Maine’s seafaring past. Visitors enjoy a self-guided tour on a beautiful campus of 13 historic buildings, including ship captains’ homes, an early town hall, and two boat houses. Children’s activities and interactive displays are geared towards a multi-level experience to educate all ages on the rich maritime history of the Penobscot Bay region and beyond.

For more information, please visit the Penobscot Marine Museum's website.

At the First Baptist Church in Belfast on Saturday, April 4th at 7:00 pm and Sunday, April 5th at 3:00 pm.

Lovers of classical choral music have two opportunities in Belfast to hear live and local performances offered by their friends and neighbors, sons and daughters.

Penobscot Bay Singers and the Mt. View Chamber Singers will offer a joint concert at the First Baptist Church in Belfast.

John Rutter's dramatic "Requiem" is the major work to be performed by the Penobscot Bay Singers in this, their 36th spring concert.

Opening the concert will be a set of diverse, short a cappella works performed by the Mt. View Chamber Singers. The works range from the early Lassus "Surrexit Pastor Bonus" to modern arrangements of "Precious Lord, Take My Hand" and "I'm Just a Poor Wayfarin' Stranger."

This is the second year the two groups have joined together for a spring concert. A $12 donation at the door is suggested for this feast of choral music.

December 10th through the 28th

The well-loved characters hop from the page to the stage in this tony-nominated musical for the whole family. "A Year with Frog and Toad" remains true to the spirit of the original stories as it follows two great friends, the cheerful and popular Frog and the rather grumpy Toad through four fun-filled seasons. Waking in the spring, they proceed to plant gardens, swim, rake leaves and go sledding, learning life lessons along the way, including a most important one about rejoicing in the attributes that make each of us different and special. A score that bubbles with melody and wit, its jazzy upbeat sound helps to make this show an inventive, exuberant and totally enchanting classic in the making. Appropriate for ages 3 and up.

For more information or to order tickets, visit the Penobscot Theatre website.

The Penobscot Bay Singers will perform Britten's popular “A Ceremony of Carols”, celebrating the night a mysterious star hovered over Bethlehem. The piece is divided into 12 sections ranging from “As Dew in Aprille” to “Wolcum Yule”, with most of the songs having origins in old English carols.

Accompaniment to “A Ceremony of Carols” will be as Britten scored it: a single harp, played by widely-admired Maine harpist, Isleen Susan Halvorsen of Guilford who also accompanied the Fauré Requiem performed by PBS last spring. Ms. Halvorsen is a graduate of Wellesley College and Buffalo State University. She has toured Europe with a production of A Chorus Line and Encounter 599. She also performed The Fantastics in a Penobscot Theater production, and has accompanied various choir concerts at the University of Maine.

Seven other selections by various composers complete the program, ranging from “O Magnum Mysterium” to “Noe, Noe, Psallite”, “A Rose Tree Blossoms” and “Christmas Night” arranged by John Rutter. Linnéa Johnson is the accompanist on piano for this grouping.

Concert days and times are:

Friday, December 5th at 7:30 pm at the First Congregational Church in Searsport

Saturday, December 6th at 7:30 pm at the United Methodist Church on Mill Lane on Belfast's East Side

Sunday, December 7th at 3:00 pm at the St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Belfast

Suggested donation for each concert is $12.