Tag: Orchestral

John Adams: “The Gospel According to the Other Mary”

by Janette Tilley

St. Louis Symphony

John Adams’s The Gospel According to the Other Mary

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
John Adams’s critically acclaimed and mesmerizing new take on the Passion story, The Gospel According to the Other Mary, tells the story of Christ’s last days from the perspective of three people closely attached to him: Mary Magdalene, her sister Martha, and their brother Lazarus. Adams’s score is dazzlingly eclectic, with vocal writing that runs a gamut of styles from laments and dramatic choruses to a trio of countertenors recounting the biblical tale. The drama is colored by unusual instruments, including the exotic cimbalom, electric bass guitar, and an array of percussion. All of these elements come together in a work of tremendous power and otherworldly beauty.

Unremembered: A Song Cycle in 13 parts

by Janette Tilley

About the Show

Unremembered is an hour-long, thirteen-part song cycle for seven voices, chamber orchestra, and electronics by composer Sarah Kirkland Snider, inspired by poems and illustrations by writer and visual artist Nathaniel Bellows (W.W. Norton, HarperCollins).

A meditation on memory, innocence, and the haunted grandeur of the natural world, Unremembered recalls strange and beautiful happenings experienced during a childhood in rural Massachusetts: a houseguest takes sudden leave in the middle of the night; a boy makes a shocking discovery on a riverbank; a girl disappears in woods behind a ranging farm; ghosts appear with messages for the living. Through Bellows’s moving words and images and Snider’s vivid, fraught, astonishing score, the cycle explores the ways in which beguiling events in early life can resonate in—and prepare us for—the subtler horrors that lie beyond the realm of childhood.

In the live performance of Unremembered, each movement is accompanied by video projections featuring Bellows’s hand-drawn illustrations interleaved with photography and videography of the cycle’s rural New England locations, offering a unique and immersive visual world to complement its varied sonic and emotional landscapes.

unremembered.squarespace.com/

Sarah Kirkland Snider

Unremembered is an assemblage of vividly intense, imagistic vignettes – some are narrative, some are existential and ruminative. In words that are simple, direct, and lyrical, we see the world through a child’s eyes. These were Nathaniel’s stories and experiences, but they triggered memories from my own childhood – my own recollections of how it felt to develop consciousness, to encounter things I could not understand or explain, to reconcile the fact that some questions had no answers. In creating music for this piece, I strove to immerse myself in my memory of those feelings, in hopes of creating a musical world that reflected the sense of magic, mystery, wonder, fear, and revelation innate to childhood.

Sarah Kirkland Snider

Mercer University at Carnegie Hall

by Janette Tilley

DCINY presents a gala concert for Mercer University, the oldest private university in Georgia. The Mercer University Choir and Orchestra performs separate solo works with a variety of musical pieces tailored to their strengths and experience. In a joyous final conclusion, both the Choir and Orchestra play together in a combined performance of John Rutter’s Requiem.

Prague Central: Great 20th Century Czech Composers

by Janette Tilley

Though right in the center of the group of countries that defined the western musical tradition, Czech composers often felt like outsiders looking in. Perhaps it was this strange perspective that led to these four composers producing these original and influential works of the early 20th century.

Performers: American Symphony Orchestra, Leon Botstein, Conductor

 Program
  • NOVAK In the Tatras
  • MARTINŮ Symphony No. 3
  • SUK Fantastické Scherzo
  • SCHULHOFF Symphony No. 5

Pre-concert

Pre-Concert Talk at 7 PM