For Immediate Release: November 22, 2008
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CARTER-MESSIAEN CENTENNIAL ~ DECEMBER 6 – 7 and 13 - 14 THE ESOTERICS PRESENTS A CARTER AND MESSIAEN CENTENNIAL The Esoterics closes its 15th anniversary season by honoring Elliott Carter and Olivier Messiæn Plus! The Esoterics has been honored with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to fund new commissions |
SEATTLE — Born only a day apart nearly a century ago (10 and 11 December 1908), composers Elliott Carter and Olivier Messiæn have each made their mark as composers of vastly distinctive musical styles. In this centennial celebration, The Esoterics will perform seven works – five by Carter and two by Messiæn – the entire a cappella output from both of these composers.
ELLIOTT CARTER (b. December 10, 1908)
Elliott Carter was born in New York and was originally encouraged to pursue his musical interests by his friend and mentor, composer Charles Ives. After studying with Walter Piston at Harvard University and Nadia Boulanger in Paris, Carter launched a career that has spanned over eight decades. He has received the highest honors available to composers, including two Pulitzer Prizes, the Gold Medal for Music from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the National Medal of Arts.
From Carter's works, The Esoterics will perform four mid-century neo-classic choral pieces: two settings of poems by Emily Dickinson -- her crystalline Heart not so heavy as mine and her vigorous Musicians wrestle everywhere as well as two settings of poems by Robert Herrick – his tender ode To music as well as his raucous Harvest home.
A recent addition to the repertoire will be Carter's newest choral work, Mad regales, to be performed by a small ensemble of singers. This piece, completed last year and premiered this summer at the Tanglewood Festival, sets three poems by John Ashbery, and is the first a cappella work Carter has composed in over 60 years.
"I only found out very recently that Carter had written Mad regales," says The Esoterics' Founding Director, Eric Banks, "and I am very excited that we were able to obtain the score and add it to the program. It is inspiring and somewhat humbling to perform something written by such a master composer in his tenth decade of life."
OLIVIER MESSIAEN (b. December 11, 1908, d. April 27, 1992)
Born in Avignon, France, Olivier Messiæn entered the Paris Conservatory in the 1930's where he studied with the legendary organist, Marcel Dupré. Messiæn is known primarily for his orchestral, piano, organ, and chamber compositions, including a piece he wrote while he was a prisoner of war in 1941 for the only instruments available in the camp (clarinet, piano, violin, and cello).
From Messiæn's choral oeuvre, The Esoterics will perform his sole sacred choral work, the transcendent motet O sacrum convivium, as well as his legendarily virtuosic work, Cinq rechants. Scored for twelve solo voices, Cinq rechants is the final piece of Messiæn's Turangalila trilogy, three compositions that embrace the medieval tale of Tristan and Isolde, and the simultaneous fulfillment of love and death. For this mysterious work, Messiæn composed his own poetry that combines surrealistic French imagery with nonsense syllables borrowed from Sanskrit and Peruvian Quechua.
For The Esoterics, Cinq rechants is a remarkable undertaking because it is so technically difficult to sing. With dynamic, rapid tempos, closely intertwined atonal lines, and only one person on a part, the piece presents the perfect challenge for members of The Esoterics who revel in stretching their own skills.
"It's the hardest thing I've ever sung," says Gretchen Hubbert, alto and founding member of The Esoterics, "and that's saying something. I've been in this group for 15 years and sung some crazy stuff in I don't know how many languages, but this piece tops them all."
Please join The Esoterics to celebrate and compare the genius of these composers at the centenary of their birth.
Dates for the Carter & Messiæn Centennial are as follows:
Saturday • 6 December • 8 pm • Tacoma
Trinity Lutheran Church • 12115 Park Ave S
Sunday • 7 December • 7 pm • Lynnwood
Trinity Lutheran Church • 6215 196th St SW
Saturday • 13 December • 8 pm • Seattle
St Joseph's Catholic Church · 732 18th Ave E
Sunday • 14 December • 3 pm • West Seattle
Holy Rosary Catholic Church • 4139 42nd Ave SW
Tickets are $20 at the door, $18 in advance, $15 for students,
seniors, the un(der)employed, and the differently-abled. Discounts are available
for groups of five or more at $12 per person. Active singers of any choral group
may attend for only $10. Advance tickets are available online at
EXTRA! Having received support from the National Endowment for the Arts for their most recent premiere, DAMAN, by Founding Director, The Esoterics is pleased to announce another grant that will fund three commissions by prominent, contemporary choral composers.
- For The Esoterics' February concert series, VOTIVITA, New York composer Martha Sullivan will set excerpts from Edmund Spenser's epic poem Epithalamion. With text inspired by the marriage vow, the piece will be the highlight of the love-themed concerts, which will occur in during the week of Valentine's Day.
- Bay Area composer Paul Crabtree will provide The Esoterics with a piece for their concert MEMORIAM. The composer has selected text from the end of Simon Armitage's epic poem, Killing time, in which the tragic violence of the 1999 Columbine shootings are transformed into a profound act of kindness; bullets become flowers and the worst of crimes becomes the simplest of offerings. The performances will occur during the week-ends before and after the 10th anniversary of the Columbine tragedy.
- Don Skirvin of Seattle, who was The Esoterics' composer-in-residence from 1997 to 2003, will be the third composer funded by the NEA grant. For the concert series MYSTERIUM in October, Skirvin will provide his longest choral work to date: an eight-movement epic piece entitled Stars forever, while we sleep, based on text by American poet Sara Teasdale.
The Esoterics has presented dozens of local and international premieres, and has tackled the most challenging works of 20th and 21st century choral repertoire. Now celebrating its fifteenth anniversary season with founding director Eric Banks, the ensemble has drawn national and international praise for presenting the many styles that comprise contemporary choral music. In 2001, 2003, 2006, and 2008 The Esoterics' commitment to innovative concert repertoire was nationally recognized when ASCAP and Chorus America granted the ensemble its coveted Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music. The ensemble was also honored to be selected as the only North American chorus to compete at the 2000 International Choral Festival in Cork, Ireland, the 2001 International Choral Festival in Tolosa, Spain, and the 2006 Harald Andersén International Choir Competition in Helsinki, Finland.
If you have additional questions about CARTERMESSIAEN or The Esoterics (media contact only), please contact Bayta Maring ()