30 Years At Yale: Concerts, Drama, Film And Exhibits

NEW HAVEN — As part of its “30 Years at Yale” celebration, the Yale Institute of Sacred music will present a weekend-long schedule of events including concerts, live medieval drama, film, visual arts, and a literary reading, all to take place April 15-18.

The weekend will kick off on Thursday, April 15, with a reading by the novelist Michael Malone. The reading will take place at 4 pm at Divinity School Bookstore, 409 Prospect Street in New Haven. It will be followed by a book signing and reception. Both the reading and the reception are free and open to the public.

Work and Pray: Living the Psalms with the Nuns of Regina Laudis will be screened at 6:15 on Thursday, in the Great Hall of the Institute, 409 Prospect Street.

The 48-minute video, produced by the Institute, shows the Benedictine nuns of Regina Laudis living in simple and secluded devotion in Bethlehem (Conn.), as they bear witness to the power of music – and especially the Psalms – to act upon and within the individual and collective memories. The viewer enters a world of spiritual suppleness and lofty melodies, a world whose timeless beauty offers a retreat for the troubled contemporary spirit.

On Friday, April 16, the medieval Play of Adam and Hildegard of Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum will be fully staged in the Sterling Divinity Quadrangle. The drama will include music, dance, audience participation, victuals, libations and revelry.

On Saturday, April 17, two concerts will be presented as part of the festive weekend. The first, by Yale Schola Cantorum under the direction of Simon Carrington, will take place at 4 pm at United Church on the Green (Temple Street at Elm). Entitled “Bach Family Motels,” the program will include works by forebears and scions of the family of J.S. Bach, from the 17th and 18th centuries. Martin Jean will be the organist. The concert is free and open to the public; no tickets are required.

Yale Glee Club, conducted by Jeffrey Douma, will then present the premiere performance of Lee Hoiby’s Song of Songs for chorus and organ. The work, commissioned by the Institute in honor of its 30th anniversary at Yale, will feature Thomas Murray at the Newberry Organ. Also on the program in Haydn’s Mass in Time of War (Paukenmesse).

The concert will begin at 8 pm in Woolsey Hall in New Haven. Tickets and directions are available by calling 203-436-4136.

The third concert sponsored by the Institute of Sacred Music will take place on Sunday, April 18, at 8 pm, also at Woolsey Hall. Yale Camerata, under the baton of its director Marguerite Brooks, will perform Bach’s Mass in Bminor with orchestra.

There will be a pre-concert talk at 7 pm in the President’s Room, on the second floor of Woolsey Hall. Professor Markus Rathey will speak on “J.S. Bach’s Mass in B minor: The Greatest Musical Artwork of All Times and People.” Both the talk and the concert are free and open to the public; no tickets are required.

“The Religious Arts in America,” curated by Holy Cross professor Virginia Raguin, will be on display through April 27 at the Institute. Professor Raguin will present a talk on Sunday, April 18, at 3 pm, entitled “Art Beyond Museums: The Religious Image and Popular Culture in 19th Century America.”

The exhibition, talk and the reception that follows are all open to the public without charge. The exhibition is also open on weekdays from 9 am to 4 pm.

Finally, an installation by Thomas Albrecht entitled “Felling Fences/Rolling Stones” will also be on view. Both exhibitions are free and open to the public, and are presented with support from Yale Divinity School.

For more information, visit or call 203-432-5062.