SONGS OF THE EARTH

For 15 years, our season has begun with the Collaborative Works Festival - an annual celebration of art song performance explored through one topic, theme, or idea. Over several concerts, this theme is explored by some of the most exciting interpreters of art song.

This year’s festival programs chart a progression: from communion with nature, to contemplation of its power, to a reckoning with our impact upon it. These concerts are offered as an invitation to listen closely, to notice what has changed, and to consider what kind of relationship with the natural world we hope to leave behind.

Gods of the Earth explores nature not as backdrop but as divine force — elemental, mysterious, and alive with spiritual presence. Featuring songs from Mahler to Monteverdi, this program reveals what happens when humankind confronts a natural world that is sacred, untamed, and ultimately beyond our control.

A highlight of this program is the Midwestern premiere of Vivian Fung's Lamenting Earth, which was premiered in 2023 at New York’s Kaufman Music Center. The cycle is scored for tenor, string quartet, and piano. Anchored by a poem by climate activist-poet Claire Wahmanholm's "O", it’s expanded through high-school students' voices on climate change with poetry that was commissioned from the extraordinary students of the Kaufman school. It foregrounds youth perspectives often left unheard, transforming lament into testimony.

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