Simple Gifts is a series of touching portrayals and poignant scenes from everyday life set to stunning music by such composers as Vivaldi, Strauss, Beethoven and Copland. Through a combination of virtuoso manipulation, beautiful music, theatrical illusion, and artistic insight, the original vignettes presented in Simple Gifts provide an entertaining and compelling vision of what it is to be human. The performance explores a range of emotions with characters and actions that are amazingly convincing. The marionettes are engineering marvels and the quality of movement is extraordinary.
Native Philadelphian Marvin Mills is organist at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Kensington, Maryland. He is also music director of the acclaimed National Spiritual Ensemble, and guest artist with the Ritz Chamber Players, based in Jacksonville, Florida. He has performed throughout the United States in such places as The Academy of Music, Philadelphia, The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, The Barns, Wolf Trap Farm Park as well as historic churches in Krakow, Poland. He has appeared as guest artist with numerous choral groups .
For over a decade Mr. Mills has been a featured artist at the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival as recitalist, chamber musician and choral conductor - preparing the Festival Chorus for major works such as: Haydn’s Creation, the Requiems of Mozart, Brahms and Verdi, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, and Handel’s Samson. A prize winning composer, his Four Spirituals for Denyce Graves have been performed throughout the country at colleges and universities by aspiring singers.
Organ programming is generously supported by the Wyncote Foundation.