May

16

A word from the Executive Director

Filed Under Kellogg: The Fiery Furnace, Bancks: Lumen de Lumine, Commissions | Leave a Comment 

Dear Friends,

The work of Soli Deo Gloria continues and has sparked some exciting performances of sacred music in recent days. Here’s a brief summary:

Lumen de Lumine premieres in Sioux Falls, SDOn March 15 and 16, a new piano concerto was premiered by the South Dakota Symphony under the baton of its Music Director, Delta David Gier. The piece was written by composer Jacob Bancks under commission from SDG and piano soloist and project visionary William Phemister. Lumen de Lumine (“Light from Light”) is a work that celebrates the glory and mystery of Christ’s resurrection through musical reflection on the Easter Vigil Mass. And what a profound and engaging piece it is! With its intricate and captivating musical language, Lumen de Lumine is the sort of work that requires and rewards serious listening, much like the music of Olivier Messiaen whom Bancks counts among his “musical heroes.” Let’s hope that Lumen de Lumine receives many repeat performances as the composer’s career continues to blossom.

Dress rehearsal of The Fiery Furnace in San Diego, CAOne of the most beloved stories in the Bible was explored in music last month as the San Diego Symphony, the San Diego Master Chorale and conductor Jahja Ling presented three performances of a new work commissioned by SDG. With all its dramatic appeal, it’s a wonder that the account of The Fiery Furnace from the book of Daniel isn’t the subject of a greater number of concert works. For SDG, composer Daniel Kellogg created a 34-minute oratorio depicting the distress, remorse and resilient faith of the Jewish people, the vain glory of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar and the true glory of God in deliverance from death. The imagination and skill at work in Kellogg’s oratorio impressed me greatly. The Fiery Furnace beautifully expresses SDG’s aim to wed musical excellence with scriptural texts, and it won standing ovations from audiences in San Diego.

Reflecting on these projects, I’m mindful that SDG supporters are the ones who ultimately made it all possible, through contributions great and small. So, huge thanks to all who are furthering this cause. I invite you to take joy in these achievements and in all that lies ahead. Expect great things!

Sincerely,
Chandler Branch
Executive Director

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May

1

‘Lumen de Lumine’ in review

Filed Under Bancks: Lumen de Lumine, Reviews, Videos, Commissions | Leave a Comment 

Lumen de Lumine, Jacob Bancks’ SDG-commissioned concerto for piano and orchestra, received its premiere in March 2008, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The South Dakota Symphony and piano soloist and co-commissioner William Phemister performed Bancks’ new work under the direction of conductor Delta David Gier. Lumen de Lumine is inspired by the traditional Easter Vigil service from the Roman Catholic church.

In a review posted on argusleader.com, music enthusiast David Xenakis labeled Bancks’ piano concerto “a heady work of inventive vigor that never dodges the religiosity of the impulse behind it.” Xenakis describes the two movements of Bancks’ work in detail. “…there are successions of restless textures and colors that seem to grow out of each other, wending their way toward the energetic second movement. The unity of the [first] movement is shaped by the way sounds overlay other sounds, or melodic fragments are used over and over and coupled to each other in curious new juxtapositions.” “…if you cap the first movement with the second, what emerges is a superb unity that leaves a listener persuaded that the ending was inevitable.” Click here to read David Xenakis’ complete review of Lumen de Lumine.

Jacob Bancks: Lumen de Lumine (finale)
. . .

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Apr

21

World Premiere of ‘The Fiery Furnace’

Filed Under Kellogg: The Fiery Furnace, Interviews, Commissions | Leave a Comment 

The San Diego Symphony will present the world premiere of Daniel Kellogg’s The Fiery Furnace on April 25, 26 and 27, 2008. Maestro Jahja Ling will lead the orchestra, the San Diego Master Chorale and soloists Nicholas Phan and Steven Richardson in performances of this oratorio based on a story from the Old Testament book of Daniel. Tickets can be purchased through the San Diego Symphony website by clicking here. To read the program notes written by the composer, click here.

A recent interview with composer Daniel Kellogg on Prime Time America, a nationally syndicated radio program produced by Moody Radio in Chicago, included discussion on sacred classical music, with a special focus on Kellogg’s The Fiery Furnace.
Click here to listen to part 1 of the interview.
Click here to listen to part 2 of the interview.

Music director Jahja Ling commented on the upcoming premiere of Kellogg’s new oratorio in an article in the San Diego Union-Tribune that highlighted Daniel Kellogg’s work:

“The oratorio is a wonderful composition. (Kellogg’s) writing for the soloists and chorus shows a great understanding of the expressiveness of the human voice. His orchestra writing is simple but profound.”

Click here to read the complete article.

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Mar

27

Composer Daniel Kellogg and SDG Exe. Dir. Chandler Branch interviewed on Prime Time America

Filed Under SDG, Interviews | Leave a Comment 


Prime Time America, a nationally syndicated radio program produced by Moody Radio in Chicago, will broadcast a two-part series of interviews this week highlighting the work of Soli Deo Gloria. The first of two interviews will air today, Thursday, March 27, 2008, at 5:00 p.m. CT, and will feature discussion with composer Daniel Kellogg, whose SDG-commissioned oratorio The Fiery Furnace will be premiered next month by the San Diego Symphony. Kellogg’s interview will be followed by a broadcast at the same time on Friday, March 28, featuring an interview with Soli Deo Gloria’s Executive Director, Chandler Branch.

CLICK HERE to tune into Prime Time America live via the internet, or CLICK HERE for a listing of syndicate radio stations.

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Mar

19

Discussing Jacob Bancks’ SDG-commissioned piano concerto

Filed Under Bancks: Lumen de Lumine, Videos, Commissions | Leave a Comment 

In the video below, conductor Delta David Gier, Music Director of the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, speaks with composer Jacob Bancks and Chandler Branch, Executive Director of Soli Deo Gloria, on the subject of Bancks’ SDG-commissioned piano concerto, Lumen de Lumine.

<p><em>[There is embedded content here that you cannot see. Please <a href="http://sdgmusic.org/news/?p=98">open the post in a web browser</a> to see this.]</em></p>


Click here for more information on Lumen de Lumine.

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Mar

14

Composer Jacob Bancks comments on ‘Lumen de Lumine’

Filed Under Bancks: Lumen de Lumine, Concerts, Commissions | Leave a Comment 

Rising American composer Jacob Bancks recently commented on his SDG-commissioned piano concerto, Lumen de Lumine. The world premiere of Bancks’ new work will take place on March 15 and 16, 2008, with the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra and pianist and co-commissioner William Phemister.

Lumen de Lumine (2008), concerto for piano and orchestra,
in memoriam Olivier Messiaen
Commissioned by Soli Deo Gloria, Inc.
and pianist William Phemister
Program Notes by the Composer

The primary inspiration for Lumen de Lumine (Latin, “Light from Light”) is the Easter Vigil service, which is celebrated annually by Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and Orthodox Christians around the world on the evening preceding Easter Sunday. The Vigil is the longest and most complex Mass of the church year, often exceeding three hours in length, and is both extraordinarily powerful for those in attendance and challenging for those in charge (I speak from experience, as Director of Music at St. John Berchmans Church in Chicago).

What I have found most striking about this Mass, beyond its length and complexity, is the sheer variety of rituals that comprise the evening’s proceedings. Beginning with a fire outside of the church, the service includes a candle-lit procession; the chanting of the Exultet (an ancient Easter proclamation); seven readings from the Hebrew Scriptures; two readings from the New Testament; and, as if all of that weren’t enough, the celebrations of baptism, confirmation, and Holy Communion.

In writing Lumen de Lumine, I haven’t so much attempted to present the listener with a musical “summary” or “narrative” of the Easter Vigil, as much as I’ve tried to compose music that captures the overall effect of the evening’s various rites. The Vigil opens with a ceremonial procession from darkness to light; likewise, the opening moments of my concerto are very solemn in character, with many angular musical gestures, like light piercing the darkness. The second half of the first movement flows much more freely; this mirrors the storytelling of the seven readings from the Hebrew Scriptures, which form something of a history of the world, beginning with the creation account in Genesis.

The second movement, much more energetic in character, represents one of the truly distinctive elements of the Vigil. The word Alleluia, considered by Christians to be the highest and most exuberant word of praise to God, is traditionally neither sung nor spoken for the forty days preceding Easter, in accordance with the self-denial of the Lenten season. At the Easter Vigil, just before the reading of the resurrection account, the Alleluia is reborn; it is this joyful new beginning I’ve attempted to capture in music.

One additional note: Lumen de Lumine was commissioned in memory of French composer Olivier Messiaen, who was born a century ago this year. Messiaen was an extraordinarily gifted composer, keyboardist, teacher, and person of faith, and his music pushed all limits of harmony, rhythm, instrumentation, and form, all the while maintaining warmth, depth, and sincerity. He is one of my musical heroes.

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Feb

6

SDG commissions new oratorio: ‘Et iterum venturus est’ by Peter Bannister

Filed Under Bannister: Et iterum venturus est, Concerts, Commissions | 1 Comment 

Signing commission agreement: Composer Peter Bannister & SDG Chairman Richard GieserSoli Deo Gloria has commissioned a new oratorio from composer Peter Bannister. The new work, Et iterum venturus est, will be scored for chorus, orchestra and vocal soloists, and is being written in honor of the 2008 centennial celebration of the birth of composer Olivier Messiaen. (Click here to download this article as a PDF.)

Composer Peter Bannister came to the attention of conductor John Nelson, Soli Deo Gloria’s Artistic Director, during the early years of Nelson’s decade-long post as Music Director of L’Ensemble Orchestral de Paris. Since then the orchestra has twice commissioned and premiered works by the Paris-based composer. A graduate of King’s College, Cambridge, Peter Bannister is the recipient of various national and international prizes and awards; his works have been performed in Berlin, Paris, Boston, Cleveland, Los Angeles and New York, and broadcast on Italian and American public radio.

Nelson’s idea to commission an Advent-related piece from Peter Bannister met with early interest from American physician and Soli Deo Gloria board member Kathy Albain, who later became the project’s chief fundraiser and spokesperson. “I was spurred by the realization that great concert works associated with the season of Advent—works like Handel’s Messiah, which are performed year after year—are so very few in number. There have hardly been any such works written in over 100 years,” writes Albain, an organist and avid lover of music, “The coming of Christ is as vital a theme as ever and worthy of a fresh setting by a brilliant composer.”

The New Testament writings of another physician—Luke’s Gospel and its ’sequel’, the Acts of the Apostles—will feature prominently in the libretto of the new work which will be assembled by the composer. The title, Et iterum venturus est, is taken from the Nicene Creed and is translated “and he shall come again.” Bannister intends his oratorio to dually celebrate the birth of Christ and the anticipation of his second coming, and in so doing pay homage to the eschatological focus of much of Olivier Messiaen’s music.

Peter Bannister shares his thoughts on the themes of his new piece:

ADVENT

Advent pulls the imagination in two directions. We turn our minds to the universal longing for God that is given voice in the Jewish scriptures, the yearning toward the “desire of all nations.”[…] Christmas is the moment of recognition, the moment when what he have always secretly known is set out in plain and fleshly terms. And at the same time, “Woe unto you who desire the day of the Lord” and “Who may abide the day of his coming? For he is like a refiner’s fire” […] Christmas is a beauty that is the beginning of terror: the Burning Babe, who has come to cast fire upon the earth. Before his presence, the idols fall and shatter.[…] we are perpetually “on the eve” of God’s coming, knowing and not knowing what it will be.

- Rowan Williams (Archbishop of Canterbury), Advent

Peter BannisterIt is a characteristic of prophetic literature in both the Old and New Testaments that many texts seem open-ended, suggesting more than one possible historical fulfillment. For example, Isaiah 9’s celebrated proclamation that “for unto us a child is born” can be interpreted in terms of contemporaneous events but also points beyond them to the birth of Christ. Similarly, if Christian exegesis since the earliest days of the Church has frequently pointed to the fulfilling of Old Testament expectations in the Incarnation, a careful reading of the words of Zechariah, Micah and other prophets leads to the conclusion that a substantial portion of the literary genre known as Jewish apocalyptic looks beyond first-century Palestine to the coming of the Messiah at the end of time to usher in God’s ultimate rule, the New Heavens and the New Earth.

ET ITERUM VENTURUS EST

The historic creedal statement “et iterum venturus est” (’and he shall come again’) reminds us that the Christian faith not only calls us to remember the Word’s becoming flesh but also to live in anticipation of Christ’s return. Et iterum venturus est is conceived as a work pulled in the “two directions” of which Archbishop Rowan Williams speaks, focusing on Christ as both the promised Savior and Judge of Christian eschatology. For a long time I have felt that during the liturgical season of Advent (which will be the context for the first performance of the piece in December 2008) a great deal of attention is paid to recalling the (not-so-burning) Babe of Bethlehem and relatively little to the Crucified and Risen Christ’s future coming in glory … ‘to judge the living and the dead’ in the words of the Creed. The danger of this is that the awesome, unfathomable mystery that is the Incarnation becomes domesticated, dissociated from the transformational call to repentance and its implications for both our individual lives and God’s world. While being careful to avoid any kind of speculation on the time-frame for the parousia, I intend to juxtapose scriptural texts regarding these two comings of Christ within one work in order to demonstrate their inseparability within the Biblical witness and, to paraphrase leading theologian Jürgen Moltmann’s view of the importance of eschatology in his classic ‘Theology of Hope’, to interpret the past in the light of the future.

Olivier MessiaenIt is precisely this idea of looking at the world from the perspective of the eschaton that is one of the most startling characteristics of Olivier Messiaen’s output right from the early Apparition de l’église éternelle through such pieces as Quartet for the end of time, Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum, Couleurs de la Cité céleste, Eclairs de l’au-delà, etc. Indeed I would say that the whole of Messiaen’s oeuvre, including those pieces with no overtly religious reference, is eschatological to the core (in its innovative language, approach to form, poetics …). Whereas so much of even the greatest sacred music is essentially orientated towards a recollection of the past, I would argue that Messiaen’s work propels us towards God’s future in a manner that has few parallels in 20th century Western art.

In a post-WWII climate in which Christianity was generally held in polite or not so polite contempt in Western European cultural circles as outmoded, irrelevant and intellectually empty (serious criticisms which should not be hastily dismissed), Olivier Messiaen was one of very few composers of international stature to combine theological orthodoxy and engagement with modernity at the highest musical level, upholding the credibility of Christian art in a secularized environment and attaining the respect of believers and non-believers alike. Sixteen years after his death I feel there is a real need for younger European composers to draw the implications from Messiaen’s trajectory and to explore its potentialities in their own work.

In this context, the opportunity to write a piece in his memory for performance in his own church on the eve of what would have been his 100th birthday (it ought to be remembered that he was also perhaps the greatest musician of the 20th century to have worked in the service of the liturgy) is as immense a privilege as it is a musical and spiritual challenge.

La Trinite Church, Paris

The historic La Trinite Church, where Messiaen held post for over 60 years, will be the site of the world premiere of Et iterum venturus est. Conductor John Nelson and L’Ensemble Orchestral de Paris will present the work on December 9, 2008, in the culminating concert of the year-long Messiaen celebration at La Trinite. Click here for festival details.

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