Eugene Vocal Arts

The voices will sing as one on Sunday — on a stage, in front of an audience, for the first time in well over a year — when the Eugene Vocal Arts chamber ensemble performs its fall concert, A Garden of Bells, at the Hult Center. There will be some distancing on stage among the almost 40 singers, says Diane Retallack, artistic director for Eugene Vocal Arts and the Eugene Concert Choir. The concert will not, however, resemble last year’s Christmas show, where singers in shifts were placed in a studio nine feet apart and wearing headsets and video and audio were spliced together. “Now we’re going to have an actual concert in front of actual people,” Retallack says. “What a concept.” The first half of the concert features works by Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer, who died this past August at age 88. “A Garden of Bells,” the most prominent, imagines a walk through a garden and flowers ringing like bells. “Gamelan” uses the ensemble’s voices to mimic the sounds of an Indonesian gamelan orchestra. The second half of the concert is dotted with popular tunes and ends with a Roger Emerson-arranged “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” Pianist Nathalie Fortin, drummer Don Elkington and bass player Nathan Waddell add to the vocal ensemble.

A Garden of Bells, a concert by the chamber ensemble Eugene Vocal Arts, is 2:30 pm Sunday, Nov. 14, at the Hult Center’s Soreng Theater. Tickets range from $21 to $38, including $10 tickets for students and can be purchased at HultCenter.org or EugeneConcertChoir.org.

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