In this special edition of The EsoCast host Travis Mayfield talks with The Esoterics
board president Bayta Maring. The two depart from the usual discussion of music
and focus instead on the challenges and opportunies the organization faces this
year. This is a must-listen for anyone in the greater eso-community.
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In this edition of the EsoCast host Travis Mayfield and The Esoterics founding director
Eric Banks reflect on the fleeting delights of nature as they look ahead to
EPHEMERA
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Virtually unknown to American audiences, Paul
Constantinescu was one of Romania's most cherished composers. In this edition
of the Esocast, host Travis Mayfield, talks with The Esoterics Founding Director
Eric Banks about why he chose Constantinescu for this year's centennial concert.
Banks and Mayfield are also joined by special guest Gabriel Dumitrescu, a Romanian
conductor, who has agree to guest conduct part of the concert.
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When tragedy strikes, the human voice raised in song plays a unique role, in that
it offers comfort to those in grief. In this edition of the EsoCast, host Travis
Mayfield explores MEMORIAM
with director Eric Banks and group member Christine Bell. Banks explores the six
compositions written in the last decade which reflect many facets of the choral
art as memorial: honoring those who risked their lives for social justice; questioning
the inexplicable loss of the innocent; and remembering historical moments of loss.
Bell shares her very personal story surrounding the centerpiece of the concert.
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In these times, when controversies over marriage provoke conflict and hatred, The
Esoterics will mark Valentine's Day by celebrating the dimensions of love that are
common to all humanity in the upcoming concert
VOTIVITA. In this edition of the Esocast, host Travis Mayfield interviews
composer Martha Sullivan. The Esoterics will premiere Sullivan's Epithalamion,
five odes by Edmund Spenser, inspired by the wedding vow - Time, Nocturne,
Banishment, Silence and play, and Blessing.
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In this edition of the Esocast, host Travis Mayfield sits down with The Esoteric's
founding director to talk about
DAMÂN, an a cappella choral opera based on the ancient texts of
singing practices of the Parsis. Banks details how The seven creations
is based in part on the gathas, arguably the oldest songs in human history,
as well as sections of the Bundahishn, the Persian creation story, in which
the struggle between good and evil results in the creation of the seven elements
we know as the sky, water, earth, plants, animals, humans, and fire.
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Simply put, Hugo Distler
composed the wrong music at the wrong time. He was 25 when Hitler came to power
and was driven by a devotion that was far too progressive for the German traditionalism
of his day.
In this edition of the Esocast, host Travis Mayfield reflects on Distler's music
with The Esoterics founding director Eric Banks and is joined by Esoterics member
Maria Drury. The Distler
concerts are dedicated in memory of Maria's father, Guenther Woerne.
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As it prepares to perform at the National Festival of the Gay & Lesbian Association
of Choruses (GALA) this July, ÆDONIS will perform
EXPECTO, its first concert series as part of The Esoterics’ subscription
concert season. EsoCast host, Travis Mayfield, sits down with Eric Banks to talk
about the past, present, and future of ÆDONIS.
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To celebrate its crystal anniversary, The Esoterics will be joined by its brother
ensemble ÆDONIS to reprise fifteen of its favorite choral works by living composers
- one piece for each year since the ensemble's first. The concert entitled,
QUINDECIMA (with its title from the Latin number fifteen), features a work
by last year’s POLYPHONS Youth Composer Award
winner, Abbie Betinis. Host Travis Mayfield speaks with Abbie by phone from her
home in St. Paul Minnesota.
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In host Travis Mayfield’s continuing conversations with 2008 POLYPHONOS winners,
this edition of the EsoCast begins with winner of the International Composer Award,
Leonard Enns of Waterloo Ontario Canada sharing briefly about himself. Leonard's
commission will be performed at The Esoterics' upcoming concert
QUINDECIMA.
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The purpose of The Esoterics' POLYPHONOS
is to encourage today's choral composers to broaden the scope of the a cappella
choral repertory by setting sacred and poetical texts found beyond the Western classical
canon in order to create a repertoire of choral concert music that reflects the
universal beauty and power of unaccompanied voices joined in song. In this edition
of the EsoCast, host Travis Mayfield interviews Scott Perkins, the recipient of
the POLYPHONOS 2008 Young Composer Award.
Scott's commission will be performed at The Esoterics' upcoming concert
QUINDECIMA.
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Seattle composer Don Skirvin's unique choral voice has helped to shape much of The
Esoterics first 15 years. In this edition of the Esocast, host Travis Mayfield,
sits down with Don to understand more about the unique role he plays as composer-in-residence
for the group. Don's first piece for the group, O Lady, was selected for
QUINDECIMA and is discussed, but
because it was performed before The Esoterics were producing CDs there is no recording
of it. Instead selections from Don's Stars to Hold have been layered through
out the conversation.
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This edition of the EsoCast features an interview with Seattle composer Linda Waterfall.
Waterfall's Guang will be performed as part of
QUINDECIMA concert in celebration of The Esoterics' crystal anniversary
(April 12 13 18 19). In this interview with board member Travis Mayfield, Waterfall
shares the origins of the piece and the story behind the music.
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The inaugural EsoCast focuses on KANON, The Esoterics' February 2008 project (February
2, 3, 9, 10). Eric Banks, speaks with Board member Travis Mayfield about the program,
which includes Arvo Pärt's Kanon pokajanen [Canon of repentance] and the
world premiere of Banks' Vitam impendere vero [To risk one's life for truth].
The entire concert is a tribute to Anna Politkovskaya, the outspoken and courageous
Russian journalist who was slain in her Moscow apartment in October 2006. In this
piece, Eric has set texts from Anna's final article (published posthumously) with
three poems by the Russian poetess Marina Tsvetayeva. During the interview, Eric
provides some background about Anna's life, discusses the process of writing Vitam
impendere vero, and describes how this piece, through both text and music,
portrays Anna's relentless and eventually fatal pursuit of the truth.
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