Wellspring Ensemble

What remains after we’ve already changed the world around us?

In his new work What Remains, composer Daniel Schreiner doesn’t offer easy answers about climate change, loss, or humanity’s relationship with the earth. Instead, the piece invites us into something more difficult... reflection.

The work moves through four emotional landscapes:
🌿 the beauty of the natural world before harm
🔥 the violence of human impact
🌫 the stillness and grief that follows
✨ and finally, the question of how we begin again

Again and again, musical themes return like memories — altered, fractured, but still present. The piece reminds us that while beauty still remains, so too does damage that cannot be undone.

One of the final lines asks:

“We begin again: not to own, but to tend.”

At the heart of Wellspring Ensemble’s upcoming concert, What Remains is less about solving a crisis and more about honestly sitting with it, together.

Join us this weekend for a powerful evening of music featuring special guest artists, Shoreline Community College Choir, and Wellspring’s High School Invitational Ensemble, highlighting talented student singers from across the greater Seattle area.

🎟 Students attend FREE
💸 $5 off tickets with code WE5 through Friday at midnight

📍 Saturday, May 16 | 7 PM — Bothell United Methodist Church
📍 Sunday, May 17 | 4 PM — Phinney Ridge Lutheran Church

🎟 Tickets + info:
https://www.wellspringensemble.org/event

🎟 Don’t miss What Remains — get your tickets today!

Wellspring Ensemble invites you to an unforgettable evening of choral music that is both moving and deeply meaningful. This special concert features guest artists, the Shoreline Community College Choir, and Wellspring’s High School Invitational Ensemble, showcasing outstanding student singers from across the greater Seattle area.

✨ Students attend FREE
💸 Get $5 off with code WE5 (available through Friday at midnight!)

Come support these incredible musicians and experience a program centered on reflection, connection, and the power of community through music.

🗓 Saturday, May 16 | 7 PM — Bothell United Methodist Church
🗓 Sunday, May 17 | 4 PM — Phinney Ridge Lutheran Church

🎟 Secure your seats now:
https://www.wellspringensemble.org/event

Be part of an evening that will stay with you long after the final note. ✨

Nox (Latin for Night), composed by Elaine Hagenberg, is a setting of two ancient Latin texts from the Catholic tradition. It is also the middle of five movements in Hagenberg's Illuminare and the opening piece to Wellspring Ensemble's concert, What Remains.

The first text in Nox is Kyrie Eleison, an invocation of God's mercy, which begins a traditional Latin mass. Traditionally, the invocation is done in nine phrases: God have mercy three times, Christ have mercy three times, then God have mercy three more times. This invocation is brought hurriedly and urgently by the treble voices: Lord, Lord Lord have mercy. Christ Christ Christ have mercy. Their voices are interrupted by violence brought by the piano and percussion. Is it thunder? War? We are abruptly thrust in into the darkness of night.

Sung as a Wednesday morning hymn, Nox et Tenebrae (night and darkness) is the second text. Written in the 5th century by Aurelius Prudentius Clemens, the text is an uplifting one:

Ye clouds and darkness, hosts of night
That breed confusion and affright,
Begone! o'erhead the dawn shines clear,
The light breaks in and Christ is here.

Earth's gloom flees broken and dispersed,
By the sun's piercing shafts coerced:
The daystar's eyes rain influence bright
And colours glimmer back to sight.

But Hagenberg chooses to set only thirteen words of this text, bringing us squarely into night and darkness, confusion, turbulence, and violence. Her setting reads in English:

Night and darkness,
Night, darkness and fog
Confused world and turmoil
Dark gloom tears the earth
The darkness beats and stabs the sun
Night and darkness
Night

I might suggest that it's not the earth, nor the darkness that beats and stabs the sun - but the confused and turbid minds of humanity. And so we begin our concert: confused human minds and hearts violently blotting out the beauty, light, and cleansing of the sun. Where can we go from here? A fitting question for our time, and it appears, time immemorial.

Guest Writer: Brian Gillespie

What Remains

Join Wellspring Ensemble for an evening of powerful choral music centered on reflection, connection, and the enduring impact of community. Featuring special guest artists, the Shoreline Community College Choir, and Wellspring’s High School Invitational Ensemble, this concert celebrates collaboration, mentorship, and the shared experience of live music.

At the heart of the program is a major new work by Daniel Schreiner: What Remains.

📍 Saturday, May 16, 2026 — 7:00 PM
Bothell United Methodist Church

📍 Sunday, May 17, 2026 — 4:00 PM
Phinney Ridge Lutheran Church, Seattle

🎟 Tickets available now
🔗 https://www.wellspringensemble.org/event

Come experience an evening that is moving, thoughtful, and deeply human. We’d love to share it with you.

Enjoy this stirring rendition of Jake Houser's 'This Day O Soul'

This day, O soul, I give you a wonderous mirror;
Long in the dark, in tarnish and cloud it lay –
But the cloud has pass’d, and the tarnish gone;..Behold, O soul! It is now a clean and bright mirror,
Faithfully showing you all the things of the world.
-Walt Whitman

Jake was the second winner of our annual Composition Competition!
Submissions for this year's Comp. are open! See our website for details - due by May 15th!

http://www.wellspringensemble.org/choral-composition...

https://youtu.be/-_lxunMZLVM?si=g_3ZB0-wZ9Js8Tc5

Wellspring Ensemble 5 likes. "This Day O Soul - Jake Houser - Wellspring Ensemble"