Musica Viva NY Ends Season With Richard Einhorn World Premieres

New York City's leading chamber choir, Musica Viva NY, presents LUX AETERNA: a one-night only performance on Sunday, May 21, 2023, at 5:00 p.m., at All Souls Church on the Upper East Side. Known for its well-balanced and eclectic programming, in this concert Musica Viva NY elicits the spiritual and transformational power of eternal light through music. The program includes six radiant pieces such as the revelatory Lux Aeterna by Morten Lauridsen and the world premiere of The Luminous Ground by Richard Einhorn commissioned by Musica Viva NY. (Scroll down for complete program details.)

Lux Aeterna, or "Eternal Light", serves as the foundation for this concert's collection of illustrious works. Building on the sensorial experience of producing, seeing and/or feeling light, this season-ending concert is the choir's response to its March 2023 program: THE SORROW AND THE BEAUTY. Musica Viva NY's artistic director and conductor Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez explains: "We are ending our season on a positive, high note! This joyful and bright concert is a fitting juxtaposition to our Spring concert which was filled with sadness and suffering. We encourage audiences to join us for this concert of optimism, creativity, and renewal."

The program begins with the explosive Starburst, a brief one-movement work for string orchestra written by Jessie Montgomery, "one of the most distinctive and communicative voices in the U.S. (BBC)." Performed back-to-back are S.S. Wesley's beloved 1850 anthem Thou Wilt Keep Him in Perfect Peace and its choral fantasy set almost 150 years later, The Darkness Is No Darkness, by the prolific British composer Judith Bingham. Continuing its theme of luminosity, Musica Viva NY performs two requiems that are less somber and more enlightening in tone: Franz Schubert's Mass No. 2 in G Major is one of the most popular settings of the mass ordinary; and Morton Lauridsen's Lux Aeterna, a requiem inspired by the death of the composer's mother.

Commissioned by Musica Viva NY is the world premiere of Richard Einhorn's The Luminous Ground for SATB chorus, strings, and piano. Inspired by the widely-known artist James Turrell and his groundbreaking light installations (recently on display at The Pace Gallery and The Guggenheim), the composer seeks to turn the sculptures' contemplative nature into a slow, gradually changing soundscape that always remains still and hushed. "According to the great Buddhist philosopher Nāgārjuna, 'The Luminous Ground' is that stage in a person's progress towards enlightenment when 'the pacifying light of wisdom dawns' and 'attachment and aversion have thoroughly ceased'," explains Einhorn. "It is a nearly unimaginable state of serenity, but one that is evoked, for me, by the extraordinary light sculptures of James Turrell."

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