Concert Season 2012-2013

Flights of Fancy

Ever since the first human gazed upward to birds soaring aloft has flight spurred the imagination. Eric Whitacre’s Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine brilliantly depicts the Renaissance thinker’s visionary struggles. Those inspirational birds appear in Stanford’s The Blue Bird and works by Vancouver composer Stephen Chatman. Composer-in-Residence Greg Bartholomew provides music for three philosophical poems by his father, a pilot in World War II. We are also excited to premiere a new work by Joy Porter, who sings in our alto section. But surely the highlight of this concert is Thomas Tallis’s massive, forty-part motet, Spem in alium; if ever a piece of music were a “flight of fancy,” this is it!

Far From Home

We have all felt a sense of distance while traveling afar. Bern Herbolsheimer’s Love Letters sets four Tatar lovesongs from just such a traveler. Jaakko Mäntyjärvi’s Canticum calamitatis maritimae, written to commemorate the 1994 sinking of a ferry in the Baltic Sea, is an elaborate and dramatic tone-poem for unaccompanied voices. We also highlight some special texts, including a speech by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and words of astronaut Russell Schweickart, as a reminder that we are all journeying together on this planet. Gustav Holst and William Billings tell stories of difficult journeys at sea that nevertheless end happily.