Description

THIS CONCERT HAS BEEN POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

——

John K. Russell, conductor

Bryan Verhoye, pianist

Reunion highlights musical selections of remembrance and unification, which includes Jeffrey Van’s beautiful settings of Walt Whitman’s Civil War-era texts and selections from Jocelyn Hagen’s amass for chorus piano and solo cello. The concept of reuniting assumes a level of unwanted separation and asks us all to wrestle with accepting things we cannot change in a way that honors our past and simultaneously looks to our future, continuing to allow hope to guide our relationships. As we strive to make sense of the severe flaws in human nature, meaningless death, senseless violence of word and deed, we continue to return to art to help us elevate our spirit, to look for what is right and strive to be better citizens. From composer Jocelyn Hagen’s artist statement from amass:

What would happen to the world if, despite our cultural differences, we all believed in this: the necessity of love and compassion towards every living thing on earth? What if we all came to the conclusion that, as St.  Thomas Aquinas avows, we are all “madly in love with the same God?”

Repertoire:

Call to Remembrance (Farrant)

A Procession Winding Around Me (Jeffrey Van)

Selections from amass (Jocelyn Hagan)

Who Would You Be (Shawn Crouch)

Alleluia (Randall Thompson)