Victoria & Robert Sirota to Perform at Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, 10/20

Organist and Episcopal priest Victoria Sirota will perform a selection of works by her husband, composer Robert Sirota, on Sunday, October 20, 2013 at 5pm in The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine (1047 Amsterdam Ave). Victoria and Robert Sirota met in college, where Robert convinced Victoria to switch from a psychology major to an organ major. Robert remembers, "I then became very interested in the organ, really because I was very interested in Vicki. I started writing music for her, because she would ask me to... So I started getting fluidity and facility, and of course she played everything so beautifully, it was worth it, like an instant commission; you'd write it and the next day you'd hear it." Victoria Sirota is the Canon Pastor and Vicar at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine.

The program will begin with Johann Sebastian Bach's Pièce d'Orgue (Fantasia) in G (BWV 572), followed Robert Sirota's Letters Abroad for Organ and Piano, Two Chorale Preludes, and Celestial Wind. These pieces, performed by Victoria Sirota, will be featured on Sirota's upcoming CD, Robert Sirota Organ Works Vol. 1, set for release in June 2014, the same month that Sirota's Apparitions will be premiered at the American Guild of Organists Convention in Boston.

Letters Abroad is a personal piece for the couple. Robert Sirota explained, "If there had been iPhones and BlackBerries in the summer of 1980, Letters Abroadwould not have been created. That was the summer that my wife Vicki went to Europe to pursue her ground-breaking research on Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel. I, along with our 4-year-old son Jonah, stayed in Massachusetts, beginning what would be for me a 12-year stint teaching composition at Tanglewood. In 1980 a trans-Atlantic phone call was expensive, and texting hadn't been invented yet. I missed Vicki terribly, so I decided I would write brief pieces - 'postcards' - to her, to ease the pain of separation. In 1982, I assembled these short pieces, with some additions, into Letters Abroad." Robert will join Victoria on piano for this piece.

Written in 1978, the Two Chorale Preludes celebrate their thirty-fifth anniversary this year. Both contemplative works, they are based on two German Lutheran chorales. Herzliebster Jesu (Ah, Holy Jesus) is taken from the 17th century tune composed by Johann Crüger with words by Johann Heerman, and based on Isaiah 53:4: "Surely he took our pain and bore our suffering..." An Wasserflussen Babylon, based on the 16th century setting of Psalm 137 ("By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion...") by Wolfgang Dachstein, is described by Sirota as "the saddest melody ever written in a major key."

Of Celestial Wind, Mr. Sirota said, "Celestial Wind was composed in 1987 and given its premiere by Vicki in the spring of that year at Bremen Cathedral (Germany). This is a work inspired by Acts 2:2-3: 'And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.' This Pentecost text, which describes the descent of the Holy Spirit as rushing wind and tongues of fire, is a potent subject for a work written for a grand organ in a majestic space."

Robert Sirota's recent world premieres include holy ghosts, commissioned to commemorate the 30th Anniversary of the installation of the historic Appleton Organ at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in May 2012, as well as two violin sonatas written for Hyeyung Julie Yoon and Laurie Carney, and a fanfare written for the string quartet ETHEL. holy ghosts can be heard on this episode of Pipedreams, an American Public Media program: www.pipedreams.publicradio.org

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