Musica Viva NY Chamber Choir Performs THE SORROW AND THE BEAUTY Contemporary Works Next Month

New York City's leading chamber choir, Musica Viva NY, continues its 2022-23 concert series with THE SORROW AND THE BEAUTY: a one-night only performance March 12, 2023, at 5:00 p.m., at All Souls Church on the Upper East Side. Known for its well-balanced, eclectic yet tranquil programming, Musica Viva NY presents six meditative works by some of today's top contemporary living composers including Arvo Pärt, David Lang, Caleb Burhans, Caroline Shaw, and Eric Whitacre. The program includes contemplative and unpredictable reflections on spirituality (some straight-forward, others more complex) through a modern lens of new music. (Scroll down for complete program details.)

"We are thrilled to be sharing a pure and dynamic expression of reverence and sacredness through live music," says Musica Viva NY's artistic director and conductor Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez, a dynamic force in the field of classical music. "Suffering, especially when shared, can be quite beautiful. Our hope is for audience members to experience the complex contrast of solace and redemption."

The concert features two works by one of the most performed living composers in the world, Arvo Pärt (b.1935). The Estonian's beautiful, minimalist music is unique, atmospheric and mesmerizing. He writes a range of music, from compelling instrumental pieces to profound sacred choral settings. The Beatitudes (1990) for mixed choir and organ is one of the first works in which the composer uses the English language. The composition is based on the text from Jesus's Sermon on the Mount in Matthew - a passage of blessings (5:3-12), from which godly virtues are highlighted line by line. Spiegel im Spiegel (1975) for viola and piano was written just before Pärt left Estonia. The piece is in the tintinnabula style (Latin for 'little bell'), a highly original musical language that Pärt created after he joined the Orthodox Church and studied Gregorian chant, the Notre Dame School and classic vocal polyphony. Pärt has said that his music is similar to light going through a prism: the music may have a slightly different meaning for each listener, thus creating a spectrum of musical experience, similar to the rainbow of light.

Described as a 21st century classic, the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Little Match Girl Passion (2007) by David Lang (b.1957) combines the Hans Christian Anderson story with form elements from Bach's St. Matthew Passion, creating an emotional and transformational journey. "What has always interested me," explains Lang, "is that Andersen tells this story as a kind of parable, drawing a religious and moral equivalency between the suffering of the poor girl and the suffering of Jesus. The girl suffers, is scorned by the crowd, dies, and is transfigured. I started wondering what secrets could be unlocked from this story if one took its Christian nature to its conclusion and unfolded it, as Christian composers have traditionally done in musical settings of the Passion of Jesus."

The hyperactive New York City composer/singer/multi-instrumentalist Caleb Burhans (b.1980) seamlessly combines classical, ambient and post-rock styles, even in his choral writing. A child chorister himself, Burhans provides a sumptuous and expressive choral setting of Psalm 137 in Super Flumina Babylonis (2013). "The most beguiling of his creations, his music for voice-exemplified brilliantly by Super Flumina Babylonis-is positively spellbinding." (The Plain Dealer)

Limestone and Felt (2012), a piece for viola and cello by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw (b.1982), presents, for the composer, two kinds of surfaces-essentially hard and soft-suggesting reverberant and muted sound. Shaw writes: "In limestone & felt, the hocketing pizzicato and pealing motivic canons are part of a whimsical, mystical, generous world of sounds echoing and colliding in the imagined eaves of a gothic chapel." Rounding out the program is Cloudburst (1995) by Eric Whitacre (b.1970). Whitacre's music was hailed by the Los Angeles Times as being "of unearthly beauty and imagination." Cloudburst, for choir, piano, and percussion was inspired by a breathtaking desert cloudburst and poetry by Octavio Paz. According to The Arts Desk, "This is a contemporary choral classic and deserves its reputation."

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