Los Angeles Master Chorale Presents CHOOSE SOMETHING LIKE A STAR And ESMAIL/FAURE

The Los Angeles Master Chorale's 2022-2023 season at Walt Disney Concert Hall continues with Choose Something Like A Star, led by Kiki & David Gindler Artistic Director Grant Gershon on February 12, 2023, and Esmail/Fauré led by Gershon and Associate Artistic Director Jenny Wong on March 26, 2023.

Choose Something Like A Star is a concert about aspiring to the highest heights, literally and spiritually. Named after a Robert Frost poem, the bright and brilliant star seemingly out of reach, yet just within grasp - is the beacon of light guiding the music featured in this concert. A person, place, dream, or literal star serves as a fixed point to which we project our imagination, ideals, and feeling of home.

Choose Something Like A Star features two world premiere commissions: VOYAGER, by Matthew Brown, and Alas de noche by Diana Syrse.

VOYAGER is inspired by the incredible scientific discoveries, stunning imagery, and the adventurous spirit and ingenuity of those who sent Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecrafts, launched during the summer of 1977, on their journeys through space. Each successfully photographed volcanic eruptions, provided evidence for a global ocean beneath Europa's icy shell, and documented geysers of nitrogen ice, and more. Before leaving our solar system forever, Voyager 1 turned its camera back toward Earth, at four billion miles away, snapping the famous "pale blue dot" photo immortalized by astronomer Carl Sagan. VOYAGER is also about the voyage we are all on, together and individually, living out our lives on this "mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam," as Sagan put it. It puts a challenging, thought-provoking, and inspiring cosmic perspective on how we treat each other and the planet we call home. VOYAGER features soprano Addy Sterrett.

California native Matthew Brown is active in Los Angeles as a composer, orchestrator, arranger, keyboardist, session singer, and tenor with the Los Angeles Master Chorale. His choral works, hailed by the New York Times as "quietly mesmerizing," are featured on the Antioch Chamber Ensemble's album Though Love Be a Day and are published by Schott, G. Schirmer, and Hal Leonard.

Alas de noche (Nightwings) was composed between Venice and Mexico and is inspired by the writing of Susana Rosado, mother of the composer Diana Syrse, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2022. Influenced by the sounds of water, boats and bells that make up the Venice soundscape along with sounds of a hospital in Mexico City where air rushes through the window and sounds of devices connected to other human beings are unmistakable, Syrse uses many extended techniques and unique instrumentations in this deeply personal piece for choir, soloists, objects and percussion. It is a tender, profound work, full of love and hope. The music reflects the love that the mother has for a daughter who is leaving to fulfill her dreams and the mixture of pain and satisfaction that she has to see her far away but fulfilled.

Diana Syrse is a composer and singer from Mexico. Her music is characterized by a mixture of sounds that shape an energy that on occasions is inspired by a musical dramaturgy of a text or concept. She is particularly drawn by current issues of social relevance as well as musical chronicles of her daily life. As a musician she also enjoys combining acoustic instruments with electronics and sometimes she uses her own voice or pre-Hispanic instruments to produce new urban soundscapes.

Choose Something Like A Star features music from Brahms, Schumann, Meredith Monk, Arvo Pärt and many more, including Michael Abels' (Get Out, Us, Nope) gorgeous a capella piece The Open Hand which was written for the Master Chorale and premiered at GALA 2022 in March 2022.

Esmail/Fauré features the world premiere of a new work by Swan Family Artist-in-Residence Reena Esmail, who combines Indian and Western classical music traditions to create rich tapestries of sound. Reena describes her latest work: "In this time of so much loss, I knew I wanted to write a requiem. But in these years of upheaval, with the loss of so much life and human connection, I'm afraid that one of the greatest continual losses is slipping through the cracks - the loss of the environment we depend on for life. This piece will be a requiem for one of our most precious and quickly diminishing resources in California: water. Built on the structure of the mass, with texts from modern poets interwoven, in a blend of musical traditions and cultures, this piece explores the powerful force of water, mourns what we have lost, and reminds us that we must still care for what we have left."

Reena was inspired by William O'Daly's book "Water Ways," a poetic exploration of the disappearance of water. O'Daly is known for his English translations of the poetry of Pablo Neruda, and is also a Research Writer at the California Department of Water Resources and is the Lead Writer for the California Water Plan. Reena uses O'Daly's text throughout the piece, intermingled with movements from the traditional requiem text. Overlaid on this texture are passages in Sanskrit and Hindi, sung by Hindustani vocalist Saili Oak. The work moves through the various forms of Raag Malhaar (monsoon raags), to convey the importance and power of water, which holds a sacred place in Indian classical music. The universal theme of water is explored through a cross-cultural lens, emphasizing that we are all citizens of the earth connected by a huge ecosystem in which water is a life force. Video projection artist Camilla Tassi's visuals will complement and enhance the piece.

Reena's work will be paired with Fauré's Requiem in D minor , with its elegant simplicity, offers comfort to the living and a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest. In its sequence of movements, the Requiem departs significantly from the standard liturgical text. Fauré included two new sections, the lyrical Pie Jesu and the transcendent In Paradisum, with its soaring vocal line and murmuring harp accompaniment. He also omitted the Dies Irae and Tuba Mirum-for most composers an opportunity to exploit to the full the dramatic possibilities of all the available choral and orchestral forces. Consequently, the prevailing mood is one of peacefulness and serenity, and the work has often been described, quite justly, as a Requiem without the Last Judgment. Both Esmail's and Fauré's works lean towards hope and a sense of beauty, and the larger forces that connect us.
Choose Something Like A Star is sponsored by AmaWaterways, the Official River Cruise Line of the Los Angeles Master Chorale.

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