2026 marks the tenth year that Sounds Good Choir has been enhancing the wellbeing of older adults through the joy of singing. Throughout the coming year, we hope to recognize and celebrate many moments and milestones from this decade of harmony-building for older adults, beginning with songs from our upcoming spring session. Founded in 2016 by Jonathan and Sandy Siegel Miller, Sounds Good Choir (then Encore), was specifically created for older adults age 55 and older. Then in 2018, a separate choral program, Good Memories, was added for adults with memory loss and their care partners to sing together in a choir. The organization has grown steadily from 93 singers and four Sounds Good choirs in 2016 to 525 singers and 9 choirs by the fall of 2025, and many hundreds of thousands of musical notes were sung in rehearsals and concerts, including 22 months of online-only singing during a pandemic.

“‘Lux Aeterna’ is a hauntingly beautiful
work by Tom Porter…”

While we may not be able to count the precise number of musical notes, we can tell you that our choirs have sung 232 songs. From all of those, co-founder and artistic director, Jonathan Miller, and Oak Park/River Forest conductor, Linda Crabtree Powell, selected for our Spring 2026 concerts in May eight songs that span the organization’s first ten years of programming. One of the eight, “Lux Aeterna,” was on the program for the debut session, sung by our first four Sounds Good choirs in Evanston, Hyde Park, Hinsdale and the Gold Coast. “Lux Aeterna” is a hauntingly beautiful work by Tom Porter, a prolific American composer who has written commissions for several prominent ensembles and is active as a choral clinician and university professor. For a preview, click the buttons below to hear two different performances of Porter’s arrangement.

Click the black button below to watch four Spanish singers perform Porter’s “Lux Aeterna.”

Click the gold button below to watch Porter, himself, conduct his arrangement of “Lux Aeterna” in a live performance from the University of Mary in Bismark, North Dakota, where he teaches.

OUR SINGERS REFLECT

Their memories of singing “Lux Aeterna”

Looking back to that first session in 2016, Jonathan Miller identified a select group of pioneers who he calls, “The Intrepids.” As Jonathan puts it, “The Intrepids were singers who were brave enough to try a new choir in 2016 and are still singing with us in 2026.”

We asked some of these singers to reflect on “Lux Aeterna,” one of the pieces from the Summer 2016 concerts in Evanston, Gold Coast, Hinsdale and Hyde Park. “Lux Aeterna” can be challenging, as several of the Intrepids will attest, but what they remember most about their 2016 experience is the joy and emotion of mastering the piece in the company of kindred spirits. Here’s what several of “the Intrepids” had to say:

Barbara Wichmann, Evanston
We were coming to the end of “Lux Aeterna” the tempo was slowing down, and suddenly I experienced what can only be described as an emotional wave, such that I found it difficult to keep it together. It was the joy and the thrill of being part of what the group accomplished. Yeah, I was hooked!

Dan Justus, Hinsdale
Yes, I remember “Lux Aeterna” as a beautiful and moving piece and interesting to sing. But I also remember “Va, Pensiero” from “Nabucco” and Jonathan working us through the Italian pronunciations.

Dorothy Pirovano, Gold Coast
I was so happy to be able to sing in a choir when I joined Sounds Good in 2016. I’d been singing in choirs since high school and was thrilled to add my alto voice to the harmonies. Then I saw the music Jonathan selected. Lux what? Latin? I read music well enough to know this “Lux Aeterna” was hard—really hard—and in Latin, a language I certainly did not know. I decided to hang in there, learn the other music and mouth what could pass for words for this piece. Miracle of miracles, I learned that song and many others that were “too hard” ever since, as Jonathan seems to delight in challenging us. And, with practice, we learn. Now “Lux” is coming to us to sing again—third time since 2016. I’d be cocky about the alto part this time around, except now I sing tenor. Oh well.

Martin Brook, Gold Coast
Learning “Lux Aeterna” was an interesting challenge, it took a lot of rehearsing. We performed it at the first concert held at The Clare and managed to navigate our way through it successfully. After we finished the song, I can still picture the always expressive Jonathan facing us and sweeping his hand across his forehead to signal his relief that we had gotten through it. The bar had been set for more complex pieces to come.

Betsy Vandercook, Evanston
Of the pieces that we sang in the early sessions, few stand out like “Lux Aeterna.” It was just jaw-droppingly beautiful. And to those of us who hadn’t exactly been singing Mozart Requiems between high school chorus and Sounds Good, it was a revelation that a group of amateurs would be offered such an exquisite piece, with its quiet intertwining lines ebbing and flowing, blending and departing. And it was NOT easy: the counting, the long rests, and the parts where the altos uncharacteristically just take off, unbound, under the soprano line, then slow down and somehow come together with the other parts. At every turn, every part had to NAIL its entrance, because if we didn’t, all those undulating lines would be out of whack, as we all depended on each other to come in and get out of the music at more or less the right time. Most of all, I’m amazed that music that has such challenges hidden within can come out sounding like it’s performed by a host of daydreaming angels, singing for the joy of singing, not going anywhere in particular but to the end of the song.

Nancia Shawver, Evanston
I love this piece. It could be my favorite of all the music we’ve sung. The title works so well for me because singing it makes me feel filled with that light.