Handel and Haydn Society to Present World Premiere by Gabriela Lena Frank

The Handel and Haydn Society's Bicentennial celebration continues with the world premiere of My Angel, His Name is Freedom by award-winning American composer Gabriela Lena Frank. It is music based on the Ralph Waldo Emerson poem Boston Hymn, scored for strings and SATB chorus.

"It is my great pleasure to introduce Frank's unique voice to our H+H audience and a wider segment of the Boston community," says Artistic Director Harry Christophers. "Gabriela's new work-this terrific partnership with H+H- is true to our times, in style and substance, and to American values and ideals that have endured for centuries."

H+H has had a long and distinguished history of premiering new works. In 1823, it approached Beethoven to write a grand oratorio in the style of Handel. (Beethoven, who in his later years was preoccupied with this final string quartets, never got to the project.) In more recent decades, H+H has commissioned new pieces by Daniel Pinkham, Randall Thompson, and John Tavener.

The 42-year-old composer-pianist Frank is best known for music that draws from diverse musical sources, particularly the Peruvian, Jewish, and Chinese traditions of her ancestors. A student of William Bolcom at the University of Michigan, where she received her doctorate in composition, Frank has been the recipient of numerous commissions and awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Latin Grammy Award.

"In looking at Emerson's Boston Hymn, an example of Transcendentalist poetry at its best, my composer's eye found attractive its lofty calls for freedom and self-determination," says Frank. "My challenge has been how to capture something that I find so essentially American-that an ordinary existence can be tied to extraordinary aspirations-in sound."

Before the performance of Frank's work, philanthropist David Rockefeller, Jr. will recite the Emerson poem in its entirety. My Angel, His Name is Freedom is the first line of the fourth stanza of Boston Hymn.

The piece is a co-commission with the Library of Congress, where it will receive its D.C. debut on February 20, 2016 with Christophers conducting.

Handel + Haydn Sings was programmed with choral enthusiasts in mind. The service organization Chorus America holds its annual conference in Boston from June 17-20. For the concert, Christophers will lead the Period Instrument Orchestra and Chorus in some of his favorite choral selections, including Handel's Coronation Anthem No. 1 (Zadok the Priest), Bach's Singet dem Herrn, Pärt's The Deer's Cry, two Palestrina motets, and Handel's Part the Third from Messiah.

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