The Instrument That Sounds Like Light
Meet Gavin Kitchen, and the instrument whose notes ring and shimmer like candlelight.
This December, Ars Nova Singers presents Darkness & Light: A Solstice Celebration, the second concert of the 2026/27 Confluence season, conducted by Artistic Director Tom Morgan. Our guest artist is Gavin Kitchen, principal percussionist of the Longmont Symphony Orchestra, on vibraphone and percussion. The choir and Gavin perform on Thursday, December 10 in Longmont, Sunday, December 13 in Denver (also streamed live), and Thursday, December 17 and Saturday, December 19 in Boulder. The program runs from Hildegard of Bingen to carols in new arrangements, and in the second half Gavin plays a vibraphone solo of his own.
A bell that breathes
The vibraphone looks like a xylophone with silver bars, but it sounds like nothing else. Its aluminum bars ring for a long time after they are struck, the way a bell does. Under each bar hangs a tube that amplifies the tone, and inside each tube turns a small disc driven by a motor. As the discs spin they open and close the tubes, and the sound pulses gently, a slow vibrato that gives the instrument its name. A pedal, like a piano’s, lets the player let notes bloom together or cut them short.
The result is a sound that seems to glow rather than strike. In a concert called Darkness & Light, it is hard to imagine a better partner for a choir: an instrument that rings like the bells of a winter city and wavers like a flame.
An American invention
Compared with the voices around it, the vibraphone is very young. Herman Winterhoff of the Leedy company perfected it in 1921 by fitting a motor to spin the discs in its resonators, and Leedy began selling it as the “vibraphone” in 1924. Its first star arrived in 1930, when the young Lionel Hampton found one in the studio at a Louis Armstrong session and played it on “Memories of You,” the first known jazz recording to use the instrument. Composers in the concert hall followed, drawn to the same thing jazz players loved, a sound that hangs in the air. On this program, eight centuries of choral music meet an instrument barely a hundred years old.
Gavin Kitchen
Gavin Kitchen grew up in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Tennessee at Martin, and came to Colorado for a master’s degree in percussion performance at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is principal percussionist of the Longmont Symphony Orchestra and percussionist for the Plein Air Sound Collective, a mixed chamber ensemble that makes music for specific places, and he plays as a substitute in orchestras and pit orchestras across the region. In 2025 he was runner-up in the Vibefest Vibraphone Solo Competition presented by Vibraphone Project Inc.
He has shared the stage with Ars Nova before, and this December he returns as guest artist for all four performances. If you are coming to the Longmont performance, you may already know him from the back row of the Longmont Symphony.
Hear it in December
Darkness & Light: A Solstice Celebration
Ars Nova Singers, Tom Morgan, Artistic Director, with Gavin Kitchen, vibraphone and percussion
- Thursday, December 10, 2026, 7:30 pm: United Church of Christ, 1500 9th Avenue, Longmont
- Sunday, December 13, 2026, 3:00 pm: St. Paul Center for Music and the Arts, 1600 Grant Street, Denver, and by livestream
- Thursday, December 17, 2026, 7:30 pm: Mountain View United Methodist Church, 355 Ponca Place, Boulder
- Saturday, December 19, 2026, 7:30 pm: Mountain View United Methodist Church, 355 Ponca Place, Boulder
Adult tickets are $40. Students and youth 18 and under attend free, because live choral music belongs to the next generation too. Livestream tickets for the Denver performance are $35. Read more: A Drop of the Sea, a Star of the Sea.
