The Northern Neck Orchestra’s (NNO) April benefit recital, Cheryl and Friends, Songs with Diverse Instruments, will be presented at 7 p.m. Saturday, April 29, at Good Luck Cellars, 1025 Goodluck Road, Kilmarnock.
Soprano Dr. Cheryl Brown Davis has a full career in music, both as an educator and as a performer. She is music director of The Chesapeake Chorale, and leads the Northern Neck Bay Tones.
Staged as a collection of duets, each song on the program features Davis’ voice and a single instrument. Musicians accompanying Davis will be Steven Custer, cello; Arline Hinkson, piano; Celeste Gates, clarinet; and Eric Jacobson, violin; all are active players in the NNO.
The program will include a song cycle by Ralph Vaughan Williams, based on poems by A. E. Housman, reported Joan Blatterman. For this musical setting of “Along the Field,” Jacobson will accompany Davis on violin.
The English poet also was the inspiration for pianist and composer Arline Hinkson, who has set two of Housman’s works, “Stars” and “The Fairies,” to music for soprano and piano, said Blatteman. Davis and Hinkson also will collaborate on Gabriel Faure’s “Après un Reve.”
The English theme continues with four songs by Gustav Holst based on carols composed on medieval devotions. The cello accompaniment will be by Custer.
Gates will join Davis for a performance of two songs composed by Gates to poems by James Whitcomb Riley, “When the Frost is On the Punkin” and “Little Orphant Annie.”
The program will close with three songs from the Beatles repertoire by English composers Paul McCartney and John Lennon: “If I Fell,” “Blackbird” and “Here, There, and Everywhere.”
Tickets, $25, can be purchased at northernneckorchestra.org or at the door. Students have free admission with online reservations.
