Spectra: Mortal

Join pianist Alexandre Tchaykov, mezzo-sopranos Sadie Habas and Carmen Edano, and cellist Mafalda Santos for a meditative program exploring the delicate entanglement of life and death.

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. Gabriel Fauré’s Élégie and Caroline Shaw’s in manus tuas are poignant memorials to the people and experiences that have passed and shaped one’s life. 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.