Program

Program:
Damien Geter † | I Said What I Said 

John Dorhauer † | Perpetuity *, text taken from Nicholas Vincent's translation of the Magna Carta (1215) and Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissenting opinion in Donald J. Trump v. United States (2024)

Marybeth Kurnat † | Birdsong * (from The Terezin Suite), anonymous text

Alex Taylor † | if you *, text by H.D.

Shane Cook † | bloom *, text by Leela Srinivasan

Gillian Rae Perry † | three months (after) *, original text

Carl Schimmel † | Towns of Wind and Wood 

I. Town Afloat in the Night 
II. Golem Town 
III. Dog Breath Town 
IV. Town of Sticks and Cudgels 
V. Thunderhead Town 
VI. Town of the Open Casket 
VII. Town of the Scent of Daybreak 
VIII. Town in the Willow on the Moon
IX. Town of the Smallest Cyclone

*World Premiere Performance
† Illinois-based Composer

Quintet Attacca is a wind quintet dedicated to dynamic, engaging performances. For this concert, they are joined by Chiemerie Obianom, baritone, Jordy Vargas and Karlos Piñero-Mercado, tenors, Katherine Peterson, soprano, and Quinn Middleman, mezzo-soprano in five new works. John Dorhauer’s work offers a commentary on our modern approach to executive privilege and the roles and responsibilities of our highest leaders by juxtaposing text segments of the Magna Carta with Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion in Trump v. United States. Shane Cook’s work, Bloom, will use nature imagery as an analogy for how we grow into identities at points in our lives, while the instruments provide a colorful, blossoming backdrop that exemplifies the idea of growing/blooming. Marybeth Kurnat’s Birdsong uses text based on an anonymous child's poem written during the Holocaust.  Gillian Rae Perry’s work, inspired by the passing of her father, explores themes of grief as part of a shared human experience.

Alex Taylor’s if you is a musical setting of the first part of H.D’s long poem Eurydice, a powerful retelling of the “Orpheus myth” from the perspective of Eurydic