Program Notes
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Presents The Promise of Living Dr. Dwight Jilek, conductor Featuring Bemidji State University Faculty Dan Will, collaborative pianist Eric Gustafson, collaborative pianist Dr. Eric Olson, violin Sunday, February 28, 2021, 7:00pm Beaux Arts Ballroom Hobson Memorial Union PROGRAM NOTES “The promise of living with hope and thanksgiving is born of our loving our friends and our labor.” - From, “The Promise of Living” from The Tender Land. This program focuses on the joy and promise in our lives – this promise of hope and thanksgiving is born when we love our friends and our work! The singers of The Bemidji Choir have not only survived, but have thrived during the pandemic. They have followed the strict mitigations put forth, and have truly loved their friends and their labor. This program includes works from last spring which were scheduled to be performed on our regional choir tour with The Bemidji Choir and Chamber Singers and our performance in New York City at Lincoln Center. All performances were cancelled due to the pandemic. We hope our offering today gives you joy and hope as we move forward together in love and labor to make this a better world. This performance is dedicated to those singers who had to end their time with The Bemidji Choir prematurely due to the pandemic, along with those we lost to COVID-19. We think about you every day. “The promise of ending in right understanding is peace in our own hearts and peace with our neighbor.” We are longing for peace, love, equality, and justice. There is promise in the work that remains to be done. In the words of Martin Luther King: “This is our hope. This is the faith…With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day…And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children…will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.” - Taken from Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” Speech PROGRAM THE BEMIDJI CHAMBER SINGERS Ne irascaris Domine (1589) ....................... William Bryd (1543 – 1623) 1. First Part: Ne irascaris Domine 2. Second Part: Civitas sanctis Tui The changes in rule during the Tudor Dynasty had some of the most volatile religious and political ramifications in history. With each change in ruler, new waves of religious and political persecution ensued. William Byrd worked as a composer for Queen Elizabeth I, and lived through years of war, murder, and political upheaval. Byrd published his Liber Sacrarum Cantionum in 1589 when he was setting Latin texts on persecution (including Ne irascaris Domine), with one theme appearing most often: the biblical captivity of the Israelites in Babylon. The words “desolata est” (Jerusalem is desolate) are uttered 54 times in this double motet as Byrd was undoubtedly grieving for the state of his country and longing for peace. THE BEMIDJI CHOIR Yoiks from Sami culture (Indigenous people from Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia) “A yoik is not merely a description; it attempts to capture its subject in its entirety: it's like a holographic, multi-dimensional living image, a replica, not just a flat photograph or simple visual memory. It is not about something, it is that something. It does not begin and it does not end. A yoik does not need to have words – its narrative is in its power, it can tell a life story in song. The singer can tell the story through words, melody, rhythm, expressions or gestures.” - Ursula Länsman of the Sami group Angelit I-i-i-hi-ho (1968) ............................... arr. Erland Von Koch (1910-2009) Carolyn Smith, soprano I-i-i-hi-ho is a yoik sung in a dialect from ancient Sweden. A shepherd yoiks a herd of cattle while watching over children at their side. The shepherd calls after the cattle and children throughout, “Kôm at kôm” (Come here, come!). “The composition preserves the most important features of von Koch’s style – lyrical melodic line, precisely determined rhythm and distinctive accent of folk culture. Despite the strong contrast between the melody and the secondary sound of the harmony, the composer created an atmosphere of mystical contemplation.” - From the 441 Hz Chamber Choir Rivers of Light (2014) .............................. arr. Ėriks Ešenvalds (b. 1977) McKayla Severson, alto Markus Babris, baritone Aaron Kolb, jaw harp “Rivers of Light might be seen as a companion piece to Northern Lights and, indeed, it revisits some of the same ideas. It has a similar folk-song opening—this time from the Sámi people of Scandinavia (the piece was commissioned by the Swedbank Choir in Riga, Swedbank being a Swedish bank with a big presence in Latvia). This is eventually combined with another Sámi folk song for a male voice over another of Ešenvalds’ ‘eternal’ chorales, and the words of the explorers Fridtjof Nansen and Charles Francis Hall also appear in a kaleidoscope of texts that facilitates a sustained but varied musical vision of light — specifically the Northern Lights — in its many forms.” — from notes by Gabriel Jackson © 2015 INTERMISSION (20 MINUTES FOR AIR MITIGATION) The Promise of Living Five Hebrew Love Songs (2001) ....................... Eric Whitacre (b. 1970) 1. Temuná (A Picture) 2. Kalá Kallá (Light Bride) 3. Larov (Mostly) 4. Éyze Shéleg (What Snow!) 5. Rakút (Tenderness) Dr. Eric Olson, violin Dan Will, piano Christopher Hart, tambourine Kaitlyn Huhta, soprano “In the spring of 1996, my great friend and brilliant violinist Friedemann Eichhorn invited me and my girlfriend-at-the-time Hila Plitmann (a soprano) to give a concert with him in his home city of Speyer, Germany. We had all met that year as students at the Juilliard School, and were inseparable. Because we were appearing as a band of traveling musicians, ‘Friedy’ asked me to write a set of troubadour songs for piano, violin and soprano. I asked Hila (who was born and raised in Jerusalem) to write me a few ‘postcards’ in her native tongue, and a few days later she presented me with these exquisite and delicate Hebrew poems. I set them while we vacationed in a small skiing village in the Swiss Alps, and we performed them for the first time a week later in Speyer. Each of the songs captures a moment that Hila and I shared together. Kalá Kallá (which means ‘light bride’) was a pun I came up with while she was first teaching me Hebrew. The bells at the beginning of Éyze Shéleg! are the exact pitches that awakened us each morning in Germany as they rang from a nearby cathedral.” - Eric Whitacre Earth Song (2007) .............................................. Frank Ticheli (b. 1958) “Earth Song is one of only a few works that I have composed without a commission. Instead, it sprung out of a personal need during a time when so many in this country, including myself, were growing disillusioned with the war in Iraq. I felt a strong impulse to create something that would express my own personal longing for peace. It was this longing which engendered the poem’s creation. I knew I had to write the poem myself, partly because it is not just a poem, but a prayer, a plea, a wish—a bid to find inner peace in a world that seems eternally bent on war and hatred. But also, the poem is a steadfast declaration of the power of music to heal. In the end, the speaker in the poem discovers that, through music, he is the embodiment of hope, peace, the song within the Song.” - Frank Ticheli The Promise of Living ................................ Aaron Copland (1900-1990) Kody Staack, tenor Dan Will, piano Eric Gustafson, piano “Aaron Copland (1900-1990), creator of so many masterful orchestral works, also wrote beautifully for the voice, particularly in his captivating opera The Tender Land (1954). He originally intended it for television, but NBC Opera Theater rejected it. The New York City Opera premiere was unsuccessful, leading Copland to significantly revise the work over the next year. Since then The Tender Land has been a staple of smaller opera companies throughout America. The music is entirely accessible and makes a direct appeal to the heart, as do the characters’ direct, unfettered emotions.” – The Lyric Opera of Chicago Precious Lord ...................................... arr. Roy Ringwald (1930 - 2017) Carolyn Smith, soprano “Precious Lord” was Martin Luther King’s favorite hymn, containing an original text in honor of MLK echoing his “dream of a world that is free.” This particular arrangement by Roy Ringwald was also sung as the traditional closing piece by the Bemidji Choir under the direction of Dr. Paul Brandvik, and continues today. _____________________________________________________________ TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS Ne irascaris Domine Do not be angry, O Lord Sung in Latin Ne irascaris Domine satis, Be not angry, O Lord, et ne ultra memineris and no longer remember iniquitatis nostrae. our iniquity. Ecce respice Behold, we beseech you, populus tuus omnes nos. we are all your people. Civitas sancti tui facta est deserta. Your holy city has become a wilderness.