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DUALIS, Basso Celestia
Kevin Crouch, Conductor In our first concert of the season, we join forces with Basso Celestia, a fantastic early music ensemble based in the Baltimore area, to explore the stories and ideals humanity has cultivated through music and prose. In Carissimi’s oratorio Jephte, we encounter the biblical figure Jephthah in a cautionary tale of folly and rash decision-making. In Ēriks Ešenvalds’s Northern Lights, we hear the words of Charles Francis Hall as he attempts to capture the wonder of witnessing the aurora borealis for the first time. Two pieces draw from Emma Lazarus’s famous sonnet, The New Colossus. Patrick Siler’s The New Colossus (world premiere) uses percussion combined with rhythmic choral figures to evoke the immense physical force involved in constructing such an important cultural landmark. Caroline Shaw’s To the Hands, written in response to Buxtehude’s cantata Ad manus (the chorus of which will be performed separately), combines Lazarus’s words with text from the Bible and Shaw’s own writing. The result is a meditation on the extraordinary achievements and monstrosities of which humanity is capable. These works invite us to consider how music elevates our most profound stories, unites us in our shared experiences, and provides a blueprint for a path towards peace. |