Verdigris' Season Finale Presents A Roadmap For Healing Trauma Through Community 

Dallas-based performance group Verdigris Ensemble has announced Synthesis' closing concert program, "How To Go On," with performances scheduled for early April 2022.

After an 18 month hiatus from major concert performances, Verdigris' 2021-2022 season-titled Synthesis in celebration of humankind's singular ability to combine separate ideas and experiences to inform new perspectives and self-reflection-opened January of 2022, and featured half of their originally planned season programs.

"How To Go On" will feature two compelling works by contemporary American composers Dale Trumbore and Christopher Cerrone, each rooted in the thematic foundation of self-actualization in the face of despair and crisis.

In The Branch Will Not Break (2015), Cerrone sets the words of seven excerpts from poet James Arlington Wright's book of the same name. Raw and penetratingly descriptive, Wright's poetry is a quest for meaning, driven by themes of the enduring human spirit. In consistent meditative tranquility, the piece gently oscillating in mood from melancholy to conscientious optimism. The work was commissioned by Milwaukee-based Present Music for their annual Thanksgiving Concert.

Tumbore's How To Go On (2016), the piece for which Verdigris' concert program is named, also finds its forging inspired by modern American poetry. Following the death of a loved one, poet Barbara Crooker questioned, "How do we go on, knowing the end of the story?" Trumbore's musical work of the same name functions as a sort of secular requiem, endeavoring to answer that question over the course of eight distinct movements. The text material of the piece comprises the work of three living poets: Crooker, Amy Fleury, and Laura Foley. The piece is malleable and customizable in that the performance notes call for the middle six movements to be ordered, or even some excerpted from the piece altogether, as the conductor and performers see fit.

Verdigris Ensemble will take the performance further, for the sake of inspiring community healing and growth, by including visual and interactive elements to the concerts, as well as post-concert talkbacks that will feature representatives of local community organizations to reflect on our shared traumas surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, lingering racial tensions, and the developing conflict between Russia and the Ukraine happening now.

Performances of How To Go On will begin with a two-night run at First Presbyterian Church of Dallas on April 8th and 9th, 2022, followed by a performance at the Moody Performance Hall in the Dallas Arts District on April 10th, 2022. All concerts will be at 7:30 PM.

Tickets can be purchased at verdigrismusic.org, with discount pricing available for students, their families, and members of First Presbyterian Church of Dallas. Prices range from $5-$30.

Locations

First Presbyterian Church of Dallas - 1835 Young Street, Dallas, Texas 75201

Moody Performance Hall - 2520 Flora St, Dallas, TX 75201

Christopher Cerrone is internationally acclaimed for compositions characterized by a subtle handling of timbre and resonance, a deep literary fluency, and a flair for multimedia collaborations. Balancing lushness and austerity, immersive textures and telling details, dramatic impact, and interiority, Cerrone's multi-GRAMMY-nominated music is utterly compelling and uniquely his own.

Recent highlights include A Body, Moving, concerto for brass and orchestra commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony; The Air Suspended, a piano concerto for pianist Shai Wosner; Don't Look Down, a concerto grosso for Conor Hanick and Sandbox Percussion that premiered at Caramoor; The Insects Became Magnetic, an orchestral work with electronics for the Los Angeles Philharmonic; Meander Spiral, Explode, a percussion quartet concerto co-commissioned by the Civic Orchestra of the Chicago Symphony and the Britt Festival; and Breaks and Breaks, an acclaimed violin concerto for Jennifer Koh and the Detroit Symphony.

Dale Trumbore is a Los Angeles-based composer and writer.Trumbore's compositions have been performed widely in the U.S. and internationally by ensembles including the Aeolians of Oakwood University, American Contemporary Music Ensemble, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Los Angeles Children's Chorus, Modesto Symphony, Neave Trio, Pasadena Symphony, The Singers-Minnesota Choral Artists, and Tonality.

The recipient of ACDA's inaugural Raymond W. Brock Competition for Professional Composers, an ASCAP Morton Gould Award, and a Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Grant, Trumbore has also served as Composer in Residence for Choral Chameleon. She has been awarded artist residencies at Copland House, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, the Tusen Takk Foundation, and Ucross. Trumbore's choral works have been commissioned for premieres at the national conferences of the American Choral Directors Association, American Guild of Organists,

Chorus America, and National Collegiate Choral Organization, and her music is available through Boosey & Hawkes, G. Schirmer, and Graphite Marketplace.

Committed to bringing the beauty of choral music to a broader audience, Verdigris Ensemble is a group of professional vocal artists exploring the boundaries of the choral medium through creative programming, collaboration, and education. Since the 2020 shutdown caused by the COVID pandemic and subsequent variant surges, Verdigris has maintained supplemental programming, including its ION Composer Competition, studio recordings, and a rapidly growing education program-now with residencies in W.E. Greiner Exploratory Arts Academy and Yvonne A. Ewell Townview Center, and an after-school Student Leadership Cohort program, which provides mentorship and training in arts entrepreneurship.

Founded in 2017, Verdigris has been featured by NPR, BBC Classical Magazine, Dallas Morning News, D Magazine, NBCDFW, KERA'S Art&Seek, and others. More information can be found at www.verdigrismusic.org or by following them on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Verdigris Ensemble is a 501(c)(3) organization.

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