The Cadet Chorale of the United States Coast Guard Academy is crossing Long Island Sound this weekend to sing beside a lighthouse. The Southold Historical Museum hosts the chorale in a free outdoor concert on the grounds of Horton Point Lighthouse, 3575 Lighthouse Road in Southold, on Sunday, October 25 from 1 to 2:30 p.m.

The program leans into the setting: anthems, folk songs, memorial music and sea shanties, sung by cadets from the service academy that sits on the Thames River in New London, Connecticut, almost directly across the Sound from the North Fork.

A program built for a lighthouse lawn

The museum bills the afternoon as its U.S. Coast Guard Fairwinds and Idlers Concert, with the performance by the academy's Cadet Chorale, a select group of singers drawn from the corps of cadets. The concert is outdoors on the lighthouse grounds, and the museum asks guests to dress for the weather and bring a chair or a blanket.

Admission is free, with an RSVP requested through the museum's event page. The museum credits Suffolk County 250th, the county's commemoration of the nation's upcoming 250th anniversary, with making the program possible, along with Sunrise Bus Company.

The lighthouse behind the music

Horton Point is one of eight historic lighthouses in Southold Township. The tower and keeper's house were built by the U.S. Lighthouse Service in 1857 on the Cliff Lot of Barnabas Horton's original 1640 land grant. The 58-foot tower once held a third-order Fresnel lens, was automated in 1933, and went dark for decades before a 1990 restoration repaired and relit it.

That same restoration turned the lower level of the keeper's house into the Southold Historical Museum's Nautical Museum, and the lighthouse now stands on both the State and National Registers of Historic Places. Sunday's audience will be sitting on one of the North Fork's bluff-top points, with the Sound behind the singers and, on a clear day, Connecticut on the horizon they crossed to get here.

If you go

The concert runs 1 to 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, October 25 at Horton Point Lighthouse, 3575 Lighthouse Road, Southold. It is free and outdoors; bring a chair or blanket and RSVP through the Southold Historical Museum's event page. Parking at the lighthouse is in the Southold Park District lot, with a $5 fee for visitors from outside the district.

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