Acton Women’s Chorus to showcase music written by and for women

You conjured springtime,

Leaf by leaf

You brought the girl 

And wrapped her in a blue day…

So begins “Grown Wild” by Acton poet Melissa Apperson. 

The piece was set to music by award-winning contemporary composer Melissa Dunphy for the Acton Women’s Chorus. It will be performed alongside other works at the group’s spring concert, “Still Heard Around the World: A Celebration of Music Written by and for Women,” on May 3 at Trinity Episcopal Church. 

The concert, presented in conjunction with Concord250, will feature voices, piano, oboe, clarinet, violin, cello, flute, and percussion. 

Featuring texts by Acton and New England authors, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, the event will commemorate the 250th anniversary of the historic battles of Acton and Lexington. 

Besides “Grown Wild,” the program will include “Acton Fragments,” commissioned in 2010 and composed by Libby Larsen. The piece contains three movements set to lines written by Lidian Emerson, from an 1843 letter to her husband, Ralph Waldo Emerson; Martha Lawrence Prescott, from an 1834 diary entry on her 18th birthday; and by Apperson, from her poem inspired by Walden Pond. 

Also to be performed is “To Sit and Dream,” with text by Langston Hughes, written by Rosephanye Powell, professor of music at Auburn University, and Tara Traxler’s “Birds of Passage,” based on the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 

A new arrangement of “Acton Hymn” will round out the program. The CWC commissioned Boston-based pianist and music instructor Scott Nicholas to create the piece based on Emerson’s poem. 

Scott was asked to craft “beautiful harmonies for the chorus, a dynamic arrangement that included all of our guest instrumentalists, and a section at the end where I could include and conduct the audience and the chorus,” says Jane Ring Frank, the group’s director.

Frank says it is “a joy” to work with the chorus “and to give life to these remarkable compositions. With each rehearsal, the chorus is fulfilling the mission of the group — bringing women’s voices into the light and into the hearts of our listeners.”

CWC is a 45-voice ensemble with members from Acton and Greater Boston. It was founded in 1960 as the Acton Madrigals and has toured in the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain. 

“Still Heard Round the World” is at 4 p.m. on May 3 at Trinity Episcopal Church, 81 Elm Street. Tickets are $30 for adults, $25 for seniors and students, and $10 for children ages 12 and under. They are available at the door and at concordwomenschorus.org.