In Mulieribus, Portland’s unique women’s vocal ensemble, opened their 19th season, entitled “Murmurs of the Muse,” at their home venue St. Philip Neri on October 18 and 19. The concert was called “All Shall Be Well,” a welcome sentiment in the troubling and unsettling world in which we find ourselves. Sarah Beaty, Susan Hale, Rachel Mast Mohr, Jo Routh (mezzo-soprano), and Henriët Fourie, Amanda Jane Kelley, Madeline Ross and Catherine van der Salm, (soprano), were joined by Kate Petak, harp, and led by artistic director and conductor Anna Song.

Carol J. Jones’s All Shall Be Well set an ancient text by the Christian mystic Julian of Norwich. It opened with a solo alto intonation, like a Gregorian chant. The fantastic acoustics of this space add layers of color to a solo voice like this, and as the rest of the group joined, I was dumbfounded at the unisons being literal unisons: even as the whole group joined it sounded as though one voice, and one voice only was singing; it just kept getting bigger. It was a perfect match of pitch, timbre, diction and intonation, a fantastically difficult thing to achieve here in this echo chamber where any deviation, however slight, would be magnified.

Gustav Holst translated several hymns from the sacred Hindu scripture, the Rig Veda, on his own, undertaking a study of Sanskrit in order to do so. He set a number of these to music; IM sang the third of the four groupings, Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda (Third Group) Op. 26, scored for women’s voices and harp. The group spun up an ethereal architecture immediately, the imitative entrances on “Hear our hymn, O Goddess” building one upon another until the climax of the phrase unfolded and I had the most curious sense of being inside a globe of the most glorious sound. Holst’s dense chordal textures were realized such that each pitch was given the perfect weight, so that all strands of the cloth stood out. There was an intimate, programmatic tinkling of the harp to open “Hymn to the Waters,” with delicate, descending arpeggios as the voices sang a rapid ode, dancing like sprites above the watercourse. In “Hymn to Vena” on the word “caress,” the word painting was exquisite, like a caress for the spirit as they bestowed the word with tenderness. In the final “Hymn to the Travellers,” a rich and woody timbre held sway, as if one were listening to a recorder choir.

Next was a pair of compositions by Shruthi Rajasekhar, a South Indian classical musician. These pieces, Ushas – Goddess of Dawn, and Priestess, were sung in Sanskrit and Latin respectively, and according to the IM program notes were “commissioned as contemporary responses to Holst’s Choral Hymns.”

In a certain way Ushas was reminiscent of the droning Gregorian-style chant that started the program, in that it mostly varied between two pitches, but the similarity ended there, and this short work see-sawed up and down on the rich syllables of Hinduism’s holy tongue. The switch to Latin was all the more interesting then, in Priestess, a piece comprising a fuller chordal structure with a fascinating, sibilant repetition on the opening syllables of the word sacerdotes.

The second half opened with a work by Steve Reich, Know What is Above You, this time setting a text from the ancient Jewish Pirkei Avot. One of the choristers began clapping on dotted rhythms and was soon joined by other clapping percussionists. The high-pitched forte dissonances were incredible, invasive and piercing yet delicious, the way a bitter food or beverage can be more enticing for its challenge to the palette. Likewise in Hilary Campbell’s Our Endless Day, another setting of a text by Julian of Norwich, it was the discordance in the harmonies that shone, this time from the harp, which at times went into the highest, seldom-heard registers of the instrument.

Some of the most sublime moments were to be found in Joanne Metcalfe’s Shining Light. A loose-flowing poem in both English and Latin, it was in this piece that the pianos were just as penetrating as the fortes from the Reich.  The harmonies exploded from out of the unisons like sunlight suddenly catching the thousand dewdrops at the nexuses of a spider’s meadow-web. Petak, whose brilliance and sensitivity was of paramount importance all afternoon, had a cool and beautiful moment of her own, playing a harp transcription by Josh Cohen of Radiohead’s “Codex.“

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The choir split into two for Olivia Sparkhall’s setting of Lux Aeterna, and the concert closed with Arvo Pärt’s Peace Upon You, Jerusalem. Open fifths and delicious abstract harmonies were prominent and forward, and the singers’ loving treatment of the long melisma on “Jerusalem” was entrancing. The overtones rang for long seconds in the pauses after the singing stopped, like starlight beaming out through the universe when its parent star has ceased shining, but we are certain of its origin because of the beauty it leaves behind.

When I was sitting out on my back porch on a morning this week, listening for birds as I sheltered from the rain, a curious thing happened. It was around sunrise, and somehow, a lonely shaft of light penetrated from the low-hanging murk and lit up one solitary maple tree, leaving all others around it untouched. This singular tree glowed a brilliant yellow, an otherworldly brightness in the gray, as if the light that shone were coming from within. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

It’s perhaps too easy to look for metaphors here, but seeing as how IM’s motto is “luminous in song,” I couldn’t help but draw connections. If it’s true, as some science suggests, that there are infinite parallel universes, then somewhere else there are other “me’s” on cognate tracks, some of whom didn’t see this lone maple, coruscant in the gloom. Some who didn’t hear this glorious testament to the power of the human voice and spirit, and in so doing marvel at the beauty of the world around them.

I’m glad I’m in this universe.