#5 reason to attend A Luminous New Year's Eve

We're halfway through our Top 10 list to attend A Luminous New Year's Eve! Have your tickets yet?

We wouldn't want you to miss out on the world premiere commissioned by Luminous Voices: Stardust by Kristopher Fulton!

Here is Kristopher telling us about Stardust. We hope you'll join us for the premiere performance!

#6 reason to attend A Luminous New Year's Eve

Reason #6 to attend A Luminous New Year's Eve? What we believe to be the Canadian premiere of 'Had I not seen the sun' by Tarik O'Regan, featuring the poetry of Emily Dickinson!

Tickets at LuminousNYE3.bpt.me
Two-concert subscriptions: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3118232

Luminous Voices audiences were first introduced to the music of British composer Tarik O'Regan in October, when we performed one of the movements of his famed Triptych with a string orchestra. Looking on the composer's website, however, we don't see any Canadian ensembles having performed this work, so that's why we 'believe' this to be the Canadian premiere!

ABOUT TARIK O'REGAN

Tarik O'Regan

Tarik O’Regan, born in London in 1978, has written music for a wide variety of ensembles and organizations; these include the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Australian Chamber Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Sydney Dance Company, Chamber Choir Ireland, BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, and the Royal Opera House, London.

Currently he is working on a commission by the Houston Grand Opera for release in 2019: a full-scale opera about the life of Lorenzo Da Ponte, the famed librettist of three of Mozart's most treasured operas (Don Giovanni, Le nozze di Figaro, Così fan tutte). Highlights of the 2017/18 season include the Amsterdam revival of Mata Hari, an evening-length ballet commissioned by the Dutch National Ballet, and performances by the Orchestra of the Opéra de Rouen, Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, and the Alexander String Quartet.

O’Regan’s work, recognized with two GRAMMY® nominations and two British Composer Awards, has been recorded on over 30 albums and is published exclusively by Novello & Co. Ltd, part of the Music Sales Group.

ABOUT EMILY DICKINSON

Emily Dickinson
(1830-1886)

Emily Dickinson was an American poet who lived during the 19th Century. Born in 1830 to a prominent family in Amherst, Massachusetts, Dickinson lived much of her life in reclusive isolation.

Dickinson's poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and the use of unconventional capitalization and punctuation. Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends.

Dickinson was a rather private poet; fewer than a dozen of her nearly 1,800 poems were published during her lifetime. She died in 1886; the first collection of her poetry was published in 1890. A complete, and mostly unaltered, collection of her poetry became available for the first time when scholar Thomas H. Johnson published The Poems of Emily Dickinson in 1955.

'HAD I NOT SEEN THE SUN'

'Had I not seen the sun' is one of two songs in O'Regan's Two Emily Dickinson Settings, commissioned by Craig Hella Johnson and the Texas-based ensemble Conspirare. It partners with the song 'I had no time to hate'.

Together, the two songs were intended to frame Conspirare's programme rather like a compositional 'inhalation' and 'exhalation', a crescendo and decrescendo, or a prelude and postlude. Densely textured, the music aims to hint at the many different takes and interpretations Dickinson's poetry evokes in its many readers. Each setting uses a solo soprano and tenor, their voices referencing the polarities inherent in each poem ('sun' and 'shade'; 'love' and 'hate').

Merry Christmas from Luminous Voices!

From our choral family to yours, we wish you and yours a blessed, peaceful and loving Christmas celebration. 

As our gift to you for your tremendous well wishes and support, we offer our performance of Brahms' Warum ist das Licht gegeben, Opus 74, No 1, by Johannes Brahms. Because let's face it: what better gift can there be than beautiful, luminous voices raised in song?

Merry Christmas!

#7 reason to attend A Luminous New Year's Eve

Jean Mouton

The #7 reason to attend A Luminous New Year's Eve? The chance to hear another masterwork of the Renaissance! 

Jean Mouton may not be as familiar a name as Monteverdi or Thomas Tallis, but his music definitely stacks up with those greats! Read our recent article about Jean Mouton and his Nesciens Mater Virgo virum, which we will perform at A Luminous New Year's Eve!

#8 reason to attend A Luminous New Year's Eve

The #8 reason to attend A Luminous New Year's Eve is a two-for-one entry: a chance to collaborate with pianist Cheryl Emery-Karapita, and to hear her play beautiful music for solo piano by Estonian composer Urmas Sisask!

About Cheryl

Cheryl Emery-Karapita

Canadian Pianist Cheryl Emery-Karapita is based in Lethbridge and specializes in the field of song in recital with Canada’s emerging vocal talent. After completing an M.Mus in Vocal Operatic Coaching at McGill with Michael McMahon, Cheryl moved to Europe to pursue a Post-Graduate degree in Concert Accompanying with Julius Drake at the Kunst Universität in Graz, Austria. In addition to studies in Graz, Cheryl spent two summers in Baden-bei-Wien working with Helmut Deutsch, Roger Vignoles, Rudolph Jansen and Wolfram Rieger at the Franz-Schubert-Institut.

Cheryl’s B.Mus in solo performance was completed at the University of Calgary with Marilyn Engle.

In addition to current recital and recording projects, Cheryl is busy with students at the University of Lethbridge and the CASA Art Centre in Lethbridge. She enjoys collaborating with Luminous Voices. She first collaborated with the ensemble in 2013 when she played the Gloria by Timothy Corlis. For this concert, Cheryl will perform excerpts of the Starry Sky Cycle composed by Urmas Sisask.

About Urmas Sisask and his Starry Sky Cycle

Urmas Sisask

Urmas Sisask (b. 1960) is an Estonian composer. While much of what he composes is sacred, he is also greatly inspired by astronomy. Based on the trajectories of the planets in the solar system, he created the "planetal scale", a mode consisting of the pitches C#, D, F#, G#, and A. He later discovered that his 'planetal scale' was exactly the same as the Japanese pentatonic scale.

The Starry Sky Cycle contains 29 movements; each movement takes roughly three minutes to perform, and can be performed in any order. Cheryl will perform the movements 'Aquarius', 'Serpens' and 'Lyre'.

For a small taste of the cycle, here is pianist Tatiana Smelova performing the movement 'Aries' from the Starry Sky Cycle. For you constellation and zodiac fans, the sign of Aries is represented by the ram, and marks the beginning of something energetic and sometimes turbulent. Listen to how Smelova captures those feelings in her performance of 'Aries'.