Tomorrow, May 10, The Ambrosia Ensemble, the group that I founded in 2010, is premiering four excerpts from the opera I’m composing, The Canticle of the Black Madonna, as well as two beautiful new motets by Northwest composers Diana Rosenblum and Robert Chastain.
This concert marks a milestone, both for the opera, which is an enormous project, and also for The Ambrosia Ensemble itself. Composing and producing a full-length chamber opera is obviously no small task, spanning several years of research, the drafting of Tiziana DellaRovere's brilliant libretto, all the composition and rehearsal required to put on this “sneak-preview” version tomorrow, and all the composition and production that is still yet to come. Tomorrow, we will invite the public to peak through the window into that massive project by presenting excerpts of what I believe are some of the strongest works that I have composed to date.
Tomorrow is also a milestone for The Ambrosia Ensemble, which began as an 8-piece a cappella men’s choir and which will perform tomorrow as a mixed choir, supported by a 13-piece orchestra and featuring four remarkable soloists. It also marks the latest event in my evolving exploration of what “sacred music” means in a modern context, an exploration that inspired the creation of The Ambrosia Ensemble in the first place and a topic that I will certainly address in a future blog post.
For those of you in the Eugene Oregon area, I invite you to join us tomorrow and
For complete concert information, please click here.