Saturday, March 1, 2025 • 7:30 p.m.
First Free Methodist Church (3200 3rd Ave W)
Harmonia Chorus
William White, conductor
Program
Jaakko Mäntyjärvi (*1963)
Pseudo-Yoik
Morten Lauridsen (*1943)
“Quando son più lontan” from Madrigali
Eric Whitacre (*1970)
Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine
Marques Garrett (*1984)
The Lesson
R. Nathaniel Dett (1882–1943) / arr. Marques Garrett
O Holy Lord
Ken Burton (*1970)
A Prayer
Sheila Bristow (*1969)
At harbor, waiting for wind [world premiere]
Aaron Keyt (*1964)
Nizina [world premiere]
Carol Sams (*1945)
“Stone” from The Earthmakers
Johann Sebastian Bach
“Confiteor” from Mass in B minor, BWV 232
About the Concert
The Harmonia Chorus presents a program that displays our vocal artists at the pinnacle of their versatility. Our concert explores several strains of contemporary choral composition, most notably with world premieres from two of our own musicians.
This performance will last approximately 75 minutes, with reception to follow.
Maestro’s Prelude
Welcome to this evening’s program of great (mostly) new (mostly) American choral music.
We’re opening with a high-energy Finnish romp, but then we’ll attack our purpose head-on with a set that presents works by the two composers who wrought a sort of “Marshmallow Revolution” on American choral music between 1980 and 2000: Morten Lauridsen and Eric Whitacre. Lauridsen has created music of radiant beauty that has proven so popular that all contemporary American choral composers have had to contend with it in one way or another. His music may tend a tad toward the over-gooey for some folks, but not the piece we’ll perform this evening: an Italian madrigal that shows Lauridsen’s refined craftsmanship and careful handling of dissonance. The exact same can be said for Eric Whitacre’s Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine. You’ll hear the clear influence of Lauridsen’s madrigal in Whitacre’s work, but you’ll also hear his use of expanded vocal techniques for which he is so rightly renowned.
Our next set features music from another, more traditional strain of American choral music. I selected these works because I wished to live a while longer in the reverberations from the performance we mounted last season of R. Nathaniel Dett’s masterpiece, The Ordering of Moses, conducted by my friend and colleague Marques L.A. Garrett. Dr. Garrett is a Dett scholar, so for this concert, I wished to pair his music with Dett’s and see what audible connections we could draw. As a cherry on top, I had to include Ken Burton’s A Prayer, a piece that I first learned about when Marques recommended it to me. Ken Burton is, admittedly, a British composer, but this piece’s luscious, soulful harmonies are clearly in conversation with American styles.
For our final set, we’re performing the music of three local composers — and some of it is literally hot off the presses! Not Kia Sam’s “Stone,” though, which comes from The Earthmakers, a major oratorio that she wrote in the 1980s. Harmonia has performed this work five times, most recently in 2019 under my own baton, and I am convinced that it is one of the great works of the 20th century. “Stone” is an a cappella memento from that piece and I’m glad to keep it as a part of our active repertoire. As for the two new pieces — Sheila Bristow’s At harbor, waiting for wind and Aaron Keyt’s and Jennifer Chung’s Nizina — it makes me so happy and honored that we have such great talent residing in our own ensembles, and I very much look forward to bringing these pieces to life tonight.
Our concert ends on a tantalizing note, engineered to make you rush to our web site and purchase a ticket for our next concert, the great and glorious Mass in B minor by Johann Sebastian Bach. Admittedly, this is an unusual way to end a program, but I’m willing to chance it so that you’re maximally primed for this grandiose work come the month’s end.
— William White
Program Notes
The Finnish translator and composer Jaakko Mäntyjärvi, who has published more than 150 choral works, describes himself as “an eclectic traditionalist.” His 1994 Pseudo-Yoik for 11-part chorus “has nothing to do with the genuine traditional Lappish or Sámi yoik, and should thus be considered to have the same degree of authenticity as local color in bel canto opera. … I would prefer to describe this piece as an impression of a stereotype — the stereotype that most Finns associate with Lapland and its people. The text exists merely to give form to the music and is meaningless.”
A native of Colfax, Washington, and a resident of Waldron Island in the San Juans, Morten Lauridsen served as a professor of composition at the University of Southern California for 52 years until his retirement in 2019. His 1987 choral cycle Madrigali: Six ‘Fire Songs’ on Italian Renaissance Poems (deemed to be “stunningly crafted” by the Los Angeles Times) was inspired by the “choral masterpieces of the High Renaissance, especially the sacred works of Josquin and Palestrina, and the secular madrigals of Monteverdi and Gesualdo. … These settings are passionate, earthy, dramatic — red wine music.” The second of these, “Quando son più lontan,” sets a text from a madrigal by a 16th-century papal singer, Yvo Barry.
Leonardo da Vinci’s sketches of various “flying machines,” based on his studies of birds in flight, inspired American composer Eric Whitacre to collaborate with lyricist Charles Anthony Silvestri on a piece for chorus (and, briefly, percussion) to fulfill a prestigious Raymond C. Brock Commission from the American Choral Directors Association that premiered in San Antonio on March 14, 2001, with the composer conducting the Kansas City Chorale. Whitacre writes: “We started with a simple concept: what would it sound like if Leonardo da Vinci were dreaming? And more specifically, what kind of music would fill the mind of such a genius? The drama would tell the story of Leonardo being tormented by the calling of the air, tortured to such degree that his only recourse was to solve the riddle and figure out how to fly. We approached the piece as if we were writing an opera brève. Charles (Tony to his friends) would supply me with draft after draft of revised ‘libretti,’ and I in turn would show him the musical fragments I had written. Tony would then begin to mold the texts into beautiful phrases and gestures as if he were a Renaissance poet, and I constantly refined my music to match the ancient, elegant style of his words. I think in the end we achieved a fascinating balance, an exotic hybrid of old and new.”
A Virginia native, Marques L.A. Garrett is currently Associate Professor of Choral Studies at the University of North Texas. An avid composer of choral and solo-vocal music, his compositions have been performed to acclaim by high-school all-state, collegiate and professional choirs. The text of The Lesson comes from a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906), the son of emancipated American slaves. “As an educator,’ says Garrett, “I feel that a lesson is about ensuring that repetition is present to aid in remembering. This is why there are many similarities between the voices. Musically, the goal is that the audience will find some familiarity and potentially learn the song even after one listen. The joy of writing this song was that it practically sang itself, which made the composing process easier.”
The Canadian-born, American-educated R. Nathaniel Dett “was a Black nationalistic composer, educator, conductor, pianist, essayist and poet who helped to change the impressions people had about Black music during the early 20th century,” writes Marques Garrett. “Dett intentionally used Black folk music as the source material for anthems and motets. His intention was not to improve the music. He simply wanted to find other ways to preserve the music and create songs for use in worship services.”
British composer, conductor, keyboardist, singer and television judge Ken Burton composed A Prayer to a text by Paul Laurence Dunbar for the Jason Max Ferdinand Singers, who premiered it in London on March 28, 2021. Burton characterizes his work as “like a reflective evening hymn in its use of a consistent, rhythmically simple melody” requiring sounds ranging from “the Middle-Ages organum style” to “a contemporary vocal approach.”
“The Nizina (nih-ZEE-nuh) River is a tributary of the Chitina,” explains Aaron Keyt, “which in turn is a tributary of the Copper River. These flow through Wrangell–St. Elias National Park in Alaska. In 2017, my wife, Jennifer Chung, rafted these rivers as part of the Riversong Program, through the Wrangell Mountain Center. I made the same trip through the same program the following year. Jennifer wrote the text as a birthday present for me in 2019, intended for choral setting.” An invitation from William White “to write something for Harmonia was one impetus for my finally setting Jennifer’s text. Another was the passing of my mother, at age 93, in February 2024.” Scored for two cellos and chorus, Nizina “is very much an elegy for her.”
Carol Sams’ 1987 oratorio, The Earthmakers, does not draw upon “the version of Creation as told in the Bible, or any one creation story,” she says, “but all kinds of creation myths from all over the world. The third myth is the story of Na Areau the Elder, who makes a toy for his son, which turns out to be the world. But in order for the son to play with his toy, he must open the world, which is like a rock. Here an a cappella chorus interrupts the myth narrative, the intimacy of the unaccompanied voices comparing the discovery of a new world with self-discovery.”
The “Confiteor” from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in B minor takes the form of a five-part chorale fantasia in which slow, meditative music accompanies the appearance of the text “Et expecto,” with unsettling, kaleidoscopically shifting harmonies.