I Was a Stranger

The Great Bend 2025-26 season concludes with I Was a Stranger, a poignant program that reflects on mercy, grief, and the power of welcome. The journey begins with Samuel Barber’s Agnus Dei, a choral setting of his iconic Adagio for Strings, transforming its familiar ache into a sacred plea for peace and forgiveness. From this place of solemn reflection, Andrey Stolyarov’s Out of the Depths offers a cry for mercy drawn from Psalm 130—music born of personal loss, gradually unfolding from sorrow into a luminous expression of hope. The program culminates with John Muehleisen’s Borders, a sweeping, multicultural cantata commissioned by Great Bend for the Chorale’s 2019 Carnegie Hall debut. The American-prize winning work opens with a traditional Salish welcome and weaves together global folk melodies and poetry from Emma Lazarus, Brian Bilston, and Alberto Ríos. Borders offers a powerful meditation on hospitality, identity, and belonging. Together, these works create a moving narrative that invites us to see the stranger not as “other,” but as kin.
PROGRAM
Barber “Agnus Dei”
Stoylarov “Out of the Depths”
Muehleisen “Borders”