The Esoterics presents Gravitas: Investigating gravity
$15-$25
Robert Paterson — Selected works
Conrad Asman — Selected works
Vahram Sarkissian — Selected works
Daniel Sabzghabaei — Selected works
Conrad Asman – My eyes are always hungry
Daniel Sabzghabaei – The Blue Booby
Vahram Sarkissian – Mheri dur
Robert Paterson – choral cycles
GRAVITAS will present new choral music that explores the many facets of gravity, grounding us and inspiring us toward greater sincerity, depth, and community thoughtfulness. The centerpiece of GRAVITAS will be world premieres by the three winners of this year's POLYPHONOS competition.
Conrad Asman (from Cape Town, South Africa), in My eyes are always hungry, set verses by Audre Lorde that were written in memory of Emmett Till, a black youth whose murder in 1955 is often considered the hate crime that changed America.
Daniel Sabzghabaei (from Baltimore via Ithaca) composed The Blue Booby, setting a poem by James Tate that describes a day in the life of the Galapagos birds. His score is a vivid extension of Tate's own poetic gravitas.
In Mheri dur, Vahram Sarkissian (from Montreal via Yerevan, Armenia) recounts a portion of the ancient Armenian Epic of Sassoon, in which the weight of a warrior's guilt impedes him from crossing the threshold to leave his self-imposed imprisonment.
In addition to the world premieres, this concert program will feature two choral cycles by the New York composer Robert Paterson. The essence of gravity is Rob's four-movement onomatopoeic exploration of love and war, orbits and tides, taking us from the violence of gravity bombs to the serenity of floating in outer space. Patersons Eternal reflections is a cycle of three heart-rending poems by Czeslaw Milosz, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Mary Elizabeth Frye. The ensemble will also reprise Steven Stucky's madrigal Gravity's dream, a whimsical setting of a poem by the composer's longtime friend, Kate Light.