MORTAL

Join us for a meditative program of vocal and piano works that explore the delicate entanglement of life and death.
About this Event

Béla Bartók’s Five Songs Op. 16 portrays the depths of grief through haunting texts by Hungarian poet Endre Ady that swirl with specters, coffins, and lost time. Gabriela Lena Frank’s Cuatro Canciones Andinas animates the folklore of the Quechua people in a series of interconnected vignettes that traverse both earthly despair and the mystery of the afterlife. The solemn, melancholy counterpoint of J.S. Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in B minor highlights the momentary, transformative synchronicities of different timelines. Finally, Jerome Kitzke sets Allen Ginsberg’s impassioned Sunflower Sutra, a poetic sermon on finding the beauty in mortality.

Béla Bartók: Five Songs Op. 16

Gabriela Lena Frank: Cuatro Canciones Andinas

Intermission

Johann Sebastian Bach: Prelude and Fugue in B minor BWV 869

Jerome Kitzke: Sunflower Sutra for speaking pianist

Artists:

Alexandre Tchaykov, piano

Carmen Edano, mezzo-soprano

Sadie Habas, mezzo-soprano

Image: Gustav Klimt, Death and Life (1915)

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