Feathers are prickly things.

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Our newest concert project features music by Shara Nova and Ed Frazier Davis, who submitted their scores as part of our 2024 call, alongside the world premiere of Hilary Purrington's Aspiration, our first commission from her since we got to know her music through our 2022 ORTUS competition. At the heart of the program is Benjamin Britten's intense, timeless Hymn to St. Cecilia, the composer's reckoning (in dialogue with poet W. H. Auden) with what it means to be an artist. We've also carefully curated music by Sarah Rimkus, Du Yun, and Nico Muhly, alongside renaissance composer Nicolas Gombert's searing Lugebat David Absalon, and short works by Georgy Sviridov and Maurice Ravel.

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This music asks us what we want and what we'd do to get it, but further still, why we want. In the Hymn to St Cecilia, W.H. Auden wrote for a reader that refuses to: 

 

I cannot grow

I have no shadow to run away from

I only play.

 

The singers exchange delicate gestures for a moment, but the counterpoint quickly unravels, and the highest voices are left alone at the peak of their line:

 

I shall never be different.

Love me.

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This is music with purpose.

 

 

 

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Our gratitude to Spiros Halaris for his brilliant cover image.