Music at St. Paul's: KINNARA ENSEMBLE

305 West 7th Street,Chattanooga TN 37402

16 September, 2022

Description

KINNARA ENSEMBLE Heralded as "luxurious, lush, and verdant" (New York Classical Review), and "breathtakingly beautiful" (Atlanta Journal Constitution), Kinnara is one of America's premier professional chamber choirs. Under the direction of J.D. Burnett, who also serves as Director of Choral Activities at the University of Texas at Austin, the choir performs a wide variety of standard choral repertoire from all eras. Grounded in the belief that communal singing is inherently connective for singers and listeners, Kinnara crafts exemplary musical experiences that speak to the modern soul and creates space for professional ensemble work in America. Now in its fourteenth season, Kinnara commissioned its first major work from composer Heather Gilligan in 2020. Drawing texts from famous Georgian civil rights activists, including MLK, Alice Walker, John Lewis, Jimmy Carter, and Stacey Abrams (including the first ever choral setting of her now famous “non-concession speech”), with an opening text by Langston Hughes, Southern Dissonance: Portraits of a New South compactly and impactfully comments on the social issues facing the current and future America. The work premiered in January 2022 in Atlanta in a performance described by ArtsATL as “clear and lovely” and sung “with ear-catching directness”. Kinnara released its first commercially recorded album, “Provenance”, in September 2017 on the Affetto label, distributed internationally by Naxos. Including Johannes Brahms’ double choir motets, Fest- und Gedenksprüche, selections from Francis Poulenc’s Sept Chansons, and Alberto Ginastera’s Lamentations of Jeremiah, "Provenance" is available for streaming on Spotify, and for sale on iTunes and Amazon. PATH OF MIRACLES Spain’s Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela is one of the revered “thin places” of the world, a shrine where the border between earth and heaven is felt to disappear. Since the ninth century, pilgrims have followed an ancient route leading from France to the cathedral shrine holding the body of St. James (Santiago) and extending beyond to Finisterre, “the end of the earth” on the western coast of Spain. British composer Joby Talbot’s a cappella tour-de-force Path of Miracles follows the journey along the Camino between four of the major staging posts on the route as an expression of the individual pilgrim’s experience. The mystical and epic work reflects the physical and spiritual progress of the pilgrim, referring to the multitude of stories of saints, miracles, and traditions associated with the route. It evokes shrines to pilgrim-martyrs, ancient hospices, the pilgrim’s passport, and the symbolic burning of a piece of clothing at Finisterre to symbolize renunciation of the pilgrim’s old life.