Horizon Ensemble’s “Massachusetts Voices,” at Boston’s Church of the Covenant on Sunday at 3:00, offers only the second performance ever of Amy Beach’s concert aria Jephthah’s Daughter, op. 53 (I discussed the premiere here), as well as two new works by local composers, and one by Leonard Bernstein. I’ve become a loyal fan of this ensemble, since its streaming and YouTube content were accessible even as I was on my Covid lockdown, and their thoughtful and adventurous programming always persuades and holds my attention. Music Director Julian Gau kindly agreed to discuss how this program came about.
LC: Horizon Ensemble is known for having programs held together by interesting, creative and playful themes. The idea of a Massachusetts theme is an obvious one, but how did you choose these particular pieces?
JG: We take pride in how our concerts tie pieces together cohesively through shared concepts and images. So thank you for noticing! This theme came from a confluence of a couple factors. About a year ago, my friend and frequent collaborator, the soprano and director Hannah Shanefield, named Jephthah’s Daughter as a piece she would be interested in performing. Having played cello in the 2021 premiere by the New England Philharmonic, I was very excited about that possibility. It’s a gorgeous rendering of the Biblical story of sacrifice and dedication, conveyed through Amy Beach’s lush, chromatic harmonies. A few months later, my friend, the composer and pianist Ben Nacar, mentioned that he was writing an orchestral work based on Paul Revere. Back in August 2022 our Summertime Scenes concert had featured his gorgeous Dodecatet for 12 instruments, genuinely one of my favorite chamber compositions, so I was enthusiastic about that idea too. Paul Revere will premiere this Sunday! It’s a tone poem celebrating the 250th anniversary of the famous midnight ride, which occurs two weeks from today. It’s an action-packed thriller with cinematic vibes, which I expect our listeners to be very enthusiastic about!
Thus we thought of “Massachusetts Voices”: Amy Beach’s compositional voice, Hannah’s soprano voice, Paul Revere’s revolutionary voice. Leonard Bernstein came up as perhaps the most famous composer from this state, even if people associate him with New York. His first symphony, inspired by the story of the prophet Jeremiah, matches with the Biblical theme of Jephthah’s Daughter, and we get to hear Hannah’s beautiful singing another time. And our very first Call for Scores happened last fall, which ended up lining up well with an April performance date. Plus, along with Paul Revere, it continues the Horizon tradition of always having at least one piece by a friend on each show.
Bernstein’s Symphony No. 1 “Jeremiah” has apocalyptic resonances. Do you think those are particularly apt for our time (and was that your thought in programming it?)
When we were considering this symphony last year, we focused on Bernstein’s Massachusetts origin, the shared religious theme with Beach, and the fitness of the instrumentation for Horizon. It’s a large piece, but it doesn’t have the extensive percussion section required by, for example, Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. This will be our biggest orchestra ever, with 53 instrumentalists. We’re almost running out of space!
In the past month, while studying and rehearsing the symphony, our minds have definitely turned somewhat to the national situation. The prophecies of calamity brought about by excess and unsustainability go unheard, followed by destruction and desolation — there is certainly a resonance with current events. The slashing of funding for libraries, museums, education, public health, and more domestic governmental responsibilities will have generational consequences for our culture and well-being. The gutting of foreign aid agencies like USAID will lead to severely increased mortality from treatable diseases such as tuberculosis and AIDS. And all of this was and is preventable.
But I don’t believe in hopelessness or inaction. I don’t believe in art that tells us our individual action is worthless against the tide of history. In performing the Jeremiah Symphony, the Horizon Ensemble laments for the tragedy and devastation brought forth by the loss of greatness and human life. The truth is that many of these tragedies, again, were and are preventable. The truth is that our actions do matter. To this effect, at this concert, we plan to distribute information about local nonprofits, charities, and organizations doing good in the Boston area, so that our audience members can learn about groups through which they contribute their time and efforts towards positive causes.
In our own small way, the Horizon Ensemble believes strongly that by creating art, telling stories, investing in the future of music, and building community, we are creating good in the world. Let’s make our voices heard! As the author David Mitchell wrote in his epic novel Cloud Atlas: “what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?”
Is this a first, for Horizon to feature poetry by local poets?
This is the second time we’ll be having poetry as part of our concerts. We’ve always known that our programming — as in, the programs of music that we pick — has been quite wacky and eclectic, featuring music by friends, standard canon works, and hipster pieces — cool but neglected works from history. But we realized that the experience we provide itself has been quite traditional. People come to the performance venue, we play music, and people go home. This season, we’ve been trying to experiment with our concert experiences. So in Summer Memories last August, we invited local poets to share their work live in ways that related to the themes of the pieces. Last November for Shades of Autumn, we had the Charles River Watershed Association speak about their mission towards preservation and environmental justice. And just this February for Poulenc Party, we partnered with the QT Library, a nonprofit building a library space for queer and trans Bostoners, with a post-show talkback about queer identities in music.
The Horizon Ensemble takes these efforts as part of our dedication to community-building. I met Chia Lam and Farah Masud at one of the weekly Sunday open mic poetry nights at Trident Booksellers & Cafe on Newbury Street, just a few blocks from where we’ll be performing. The poems they shared last August, both related to heritage and history, were beautiful complements to Gabriela Lena Frank’s Elegía Andina and Maurice Ravel’s Pavane for a Dead Princess. For Massachusetts Voices, they’re both back again: Farah will be presenting “Daughters of Broken Vows” as a companion to Jephthah’s Daughter, and Chia will be reading “Into That Unending Blue” as a lead-in to our Call for Scores winner, John Rotar’s Coonarr. We’re excited to be sharing their poetic Massachusetts voices in tandem with the musical voices on the rest of the program. I can’t wait for everyone to hear them!
And also, the fruits of your first call for scores! How many submissions did you receive and were you happy with the results?
The Call for Scores was a really exciting process. As an orchestra that plays music by friends, we initiated this Call for Scores in order to find new collaborators outside of Boston, outside of our personal spheres. It certainly worked — John Rotar, the composer of Coonarr, lives all the way down under in Brisbane, Australia. In fact, there were two divisions: the orchestral category, for this April performance, and the chamber category, for works of 7–12 musicians to be recorded professionally in June. In all, we received over 130 orchestral submissions and over 90 chamber submissions. It was a lot of music to read and listen through, but I’m deeply thankful to the members of New Music Mosaic and the Horizon Ensemble team for helping look at these submissions.
Out of so many choices, it’s hard to pick just one worthy candidate. But we were quite sure about our final decision, which is a wonderful piece. It’s a vivid portrait of Coonarr, the small regional locality where the composer grew up, as well as Coonarr Beach, both in Queensland, Australia. With big brass pedals, lively rhythms, and vibrant orchestration, it’s full of vivacity and bright sun. The vast sands, the blue sky, the deep ocean. The orchestra plays it adroitly and they enjoy it a lot. As for the chamber pieces we chose for the recording, they vary greatly in style and mood, between the playful dances of Daniel Sabzghabaei’s outside(inside)out, the leaf-delicate pointillism of Arjan Singh Dogra’s Khulasa, and the soaring strains of Theo Chandler’s Trailing Wings. We look forward to sharing these new compositions with everyone at this Sunday’s concert, and our recording sessions in June.
Tickets for the April 6th concert at Church of the Covenent are HERE. Read more HERE