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!

Choir

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).  Contact Music Director Ronnie Romano at music@cvuus.org or 201-388-4038 to be added to the choir list. Look for email from choir@cvuus.org (and check your spam folders for initial ones).

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

Ronnie Romano (Music Dir.), Carol Harden, Revell Allen, Chris Murphy, YOU?! Contact Ronnie if you have ideas or want to join our ministry.

Music Director

Meet Ronnie Romano 

Ronnie Romano, our Director of Music, is a recent (2020) graduate of Middlebury College, where he majored in music and minored in Chinese.  Last year, he served as Music Director and organist of First United Methodist Church in Ticonderoga, NY.  Among his ongoing activities are his work as Music Director of the Wellspring Hospice Singers in Middlebury and music instructor for the Choral Chameleon Institute in New York City. He also offers private lessons on ear training, piano, music theory, and score reading and is founding director of a new choir at All Souls Interfaith Gathering in Shelburne, VT.

Ronnie brings remarkable breadth and depth of experience to CVUUS. As a student at Middlebury College, he was music director and pianist for the Middlebury College Musical Theatre performances of 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Spring Awakening, Cabaret, and The Light in the Plazza.  He was also assistant conductor, accompanist, and a singer for the Middlebury College Choir and a teaching assistant for music theory classes.  In the summer of 2018, as music director and pianist for Brecht on Brecht at the Atlantic Theatre company in NYC, he played piano on stage for the duration of the show’s Off-Broadway run.  Ronnie spent a semester at Keble College, University of Oxford, and, in 2019, participated in a month-long intensive course at the European American Musical Alliance in Paris.  We were delighted to have his leadership and ideas in strengthening and growing our music program this past year. View Ronnie’s introduction to us here.

Open Mic Nights & Contra Dances

Music Ministry hosts open mic nights and contra dances periodically. Thanks to all who participated in CVUUS St. Patrick’s Day Open-Mic Night 2023. We enjoyed Poppy Rees as a superb emcee assisted by Ollie Cultrara, performances by young pianists, storytellers – serious and comic, plus singers, banjo tunes, poetry, a contra dance with Richard Hopkins as caller, and refreshments from our choir members. Special thanks to our wonderful organizer Carol Harden who escorted the 50 to 60 of us out on viola.

What’s the Future of Music at CVUUS? Congregational Conversation

We reconvene for monthly congregational conversations (3rd Sunday following worship Oct through May). October 2022’s focus was on the future of music at CVUUS. Want to suggest a topic for a future one? Contact Council of Ministries member Alan Moore or Music Ministry leader Carol Harden.

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: