COLORADO VOCAL ARTS ENSEMBLE
2019-2020 CONCERT SEASON
Presented by the Taylor Memorial Concert Series
Sunday, February 16 at 3 pm
GRACE & ST. STEPHEN’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH 631 N. Tejon St.
Admission free, donations accepted.
Let us open our hands to those of others. (What are these wounds, in my hands, and in yours?) Walls are not the answer. We are all creatures.
--Caroline Shaw
Displacement of people resulting from human conflict and climate crisis poses the greatest challenge of our century. This concert will span six centuries, reflecting on themes of lost homeland, disconnection, and the search for refuge. At the heart of the program is the Colorado premiere performance of Caroline Shaw’s “To the Hands” from Seven Responses. Seven of the world's foremost composers were asked to write 21st-century responses to Buxtehude's Membra Jesu Nostri, an iconic sacred work of the German Baroque focusing on Christ’s suffering on the cross. Shaw’s response “To the Hands,” scored for SATB choir and strings, begins inside the 17th century sound of Buxtehude. It expands and colors and breaks this language, as the piece’s core considerations of the suffering of those around the world seeking refuge, and of our role and responsibility in these global and local crises gradually come into focus.
Full Program:
O vos omnes Tomas Luis de Victoria (1548-1611)
Wie liegt die Stadt so wüst Rudolf Mauersberger (1889-1971)
Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen Heinrich Isaac (1450-1517)
Poor Wayfarin’ Stranger arr. for women’s voices by anonymous 4
Valparaiso Sting, arr. for men’s voices by Timothy Takach
Motherless Child arr. Craig Hella Johnson
To the hands Caroline Shaw (b. 1982)
Lord, thou hast been our refuge Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Sanctuary
BENJAMIN BRITTEN
WAR REQUIEM
With Colorado Springs Philharmonic, Colorado Springs Chorale and Colorado Springs Children’s Chorale
The CS Philharmonic’s Becoming Heroes series ends with its capstone, a once-in-a-generation performance of Benjamin Britten’s masterpiece, written in 1962 to re-consecrate Coventry Cathedral, which was destroyed in the Battle of Britain of 1940. A staunch pacifist, Benjamin Britten formed his War Requiem as a clarion call, decrying ‘war and the pity of war.’ Texts by the First World War soldier-poet Wilfred Owen give an arresting variation on the Latin Requiem Mass. Maestro Josep Caballé-Domenech leads the Colorado Springs Philharmonic in this immense reminder of the horror and futility of armed conflict
SATURDAY, MAY 16 7:30 p.m.
AND
SUNDAY, MAY 17 3:00 p.m.
Pikes Peak Center
Tickets: