The Esoterics

For Immediate Release: March 24, 2009

SEATTLE — When tragedy strikes, the human voice raised in song plays a unique role in fulfilling our emotive needs. In MEMORIAM, The Esoterics explores the power of a cappella choral music in voicing the unspeakable.

In 2009, our nation will recognize the 10th anniversary of a day in which innocent lives were taken, almost before our eyes, at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. In MEMORIAM, The Esoterics will recognize the portent of this event by singing a newly commissioned work by Bay Area composer Paul Crabtree.

In this work, Crabtree sets an excerpt from Simon Armitage's epic poem, Killing time, which summarizes the events of 1999 and commemorates the turn of the millennium. Within the poem, Armitage uses simulated reportage from April 20, 1999 to transform the horrors of that day into a reflection on the depth of human kindness: references to bullets, guns, and violence are re-written into simple offerings of flowers. In this paradoxical and provocative text, Armitage conjures up a suburban dystopia, where flowers are a forbidden commodity, and kindness a shocking human trait.

"One thing that inspired me about Armitage's poem was the tension between its Utopian and Dystopian imagery," says composer Crabtree. "A world of despicable kindness, a world full of flower horrors is hard to imagine, yet it is a perfect vehicle for the unfathomable events of the day."

Building on this world premiere commission, Banks was inspired to seek out other pieces that not only express sorrow at the meaninglessness of lives cut short, but also use multi-layered, poetic texts to extract some kind of meaning from senseless events.

"Although most of the pieces in MEMORIAM commemorate recent loss, the texts themselves combine contemporary reportage with more poetic texts, including Shakespeare and the Psalms," says Banks. "The memorial is one of the sincerest forms of communication, where one can experience the most immediate texts written after these tragedies alongside some of the most profound human words about grief and loss."

Banks highlights this interplay in his own composition, Vitam impendere vero, written in honor of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya who was killed in her Moscow apartment building in 2006. An outspoken opponent of the Putin regime, Politkovskaya was slain on Putin's birthday, and the true killers have yet to be brought to justice.

In Banks' piece, previously performed by The Esoterics in February of 2008, a soloist sings English phases from Politkovskaya's final article, published posthumously and translated into English, while the choir sings setting of three poems by the acclaimed Russian poetess Marina Tsvetayeva. These parallel texts explore the concept of truth; while Politkovskaya's article details her ultimately fatal commitment to reporting the atrocities that she had witnessed; Tsvetayeva's poems employ vivid imagery to portray the inter-relationships between life, death, fear, and courage.

Five additional compositions round out the program from MEMORIAM:

• In honor of the tragedy of September 11, 2001, Dominic Argento composed a setting of Shakespeare's Sonnet LXIV. The piece explores loss on both a personal and historical scale, including the text, "When sometimes lofty towers I see downraised . . . "

• Jaakko Mäntyjärvi's Canticum calamitatis maritimæ sets a psalm traditionally read for those lost at sea, in honor of lives lost when the ferry Estonia sank in the Baltic Sea in 1994, with over 900 lives lost.

• Justin Merritt's piece, Hay días (There are days), sets a poem by Jaime Quemain, an independent newspaper editor in El Salvador who, in 1980, was slain by a paramilitary death squad at the age of 30. Merritt was one of the first winners of The Esoterics' POLYPHONOS composition competition and Hay días was the resulting prize commission.

• John Muehleisen's Perplexed music, his setting of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sonnet, is dedicated to the memory of his cousin, who was stillborn.

• In addition, The Esoterics is proud to announce the Northwest premiere of John Muehleisen's most recent composition, When all is done, written as a commission for the University of Wyoming Concert Choir. Muehleisen's work sets a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar as a tribute to Matthew Shepard, who died in 1998 as the victim of this decade's most notorious hate crime.

Muehleisen's Perplexed music and Argento's Sonnet LXIV can be found on The Esoterics' CD SONETTARIA; and Canticum calamitatis maritimæ, by Jaakko Mäntyjärvi was recorded by The Esoterics on its ELEMENTIA CD.

Please join The Esoterics for this mediation on lives cut short in the course of human events.

Saturday 18 Apr 7:00 PM • Lynnwood
Trinity Lutheran Church • 6215 196th St. SW

Sunday 19 Apr 3:00 PM • Tacoma
Christ Episcopal Church • 310 N K St.

Saturday 25 Apr 8:00 PM • Seattle
St Joseph's Catholic Church • 732 18th Ave E

Sunday 26 Apr 3:00 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 www.TheEsoterics.org (through PayPal.com), or reserved by phone at 206.935.7779.

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 in its 16th season with founding director Eric Banks, the ensemble has drawn national and international praise for presenting the many styles that comprise contemporary choral music. The Esoterics' commitment to innovative concert repertoire has been nationally recognized four times (in 2001, 2003, 2006, and 2008) with the ASCAP and Chorus America 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 MEMORIAM or The Esoterics (media contact only), please contact Bayta Maring ()