Musicians Wrestle Everywhere

Friday May 19, 2023 at 7:30pm
Sunday May 21, 2023 at 4:00pm

at First United Church of Oak Park
848 Lake Street, Oak Park, IL

Hear how poetry inspires song in Musicians Wrestle Everywhere, a concert by City Voices, directed by William Chin, with poems set to music for chorus.

Poetry and singing are a perfect fit, beginning with Elliott Carter’s dynamic setting of Emily Dickinson’s poem, Musicians Wrestle Everywhere. Of course, there will be love poetry: from Hila Plitman in Eric Whitacre’s Five Hebrew Love Songs, and Sean Ivory’s setting of the lovely poem Chanson by Jacques Prévert. But there are also dreams and darkness: Eriks Esenvalds takes on Sara Teasdale in Only In Sleep, and Morten Lauridsen creates a definitive setting of James Agee’s Sure On This Shining Night. Old and new combine in pieces like Bob Chilcott’s Canon (Rosa Mystica), a mashup of Oscar Wilde and Pachelbel’s Canon in D; and in Chicago composer Stacy Garrop’s Fly Envious Time with poetry by John Milton. Then City Voices gets theatrical–figuratively and literally–with Gertrude Stein in music from Virgil Thompson’s opera Four Saints in Three Acts, and a modern take on Alfred, Lord Tennyson in Paul Halley’s Untraveled Worlds for chorus, violin, piano, and percussion. And more.