On Sunday, August 3rd, Baton Rouge Gallery will host Opus Vocal Ensemble is a dynamic chamber choir dedicated to marrying ancient and modern a cappella music, with a particular focus on composers and performers who’ve been marginalized throughout the years. This program explores intimate worship. As with all Sundays@4 events, this will be free and open to the public.
William Byrd wrote all three of his settings of the Catholic Mass at a time when it was a criminal offense to be Catholic in England. While his music for the Anglican Church was receiving grand cathedral performances and large scale printings, his offerings for the Roman Rite were being heard only in peoples’ homes, printed in small pamphlets for ease of disposal if found. It’s hard to imagine in modern Louisiana, with our shouting from the rooftops and Mississippi River eucharistic processions, but this version of the Catholic liturgy was a highly personal endeavor.
Byrd’s main partner in musical conversation here is music by and inspired by Pauline Oliveros. Oliveros was a lesbian, accordionist, composer, and listener instrumental in experimental sound after WWII until her death in 2016. Though she was a composer in the more traditional sense, her most potent contribution to the history of sound is Deep Listening: a band, album, and movement focused on truly hearing and reacting to the sounds around and within us. Her Sonic Meditations are a wide collection of works built to dissolve the hierarchy between the conductor, ensemble, and audience, forcing us all to work together to engage with the music. Modern lesbian composers like Riley Ferretti and Rose Rodrigue attempt to continue her legacies.
Sundays@4 is presented in partnership with the Atchafalaya National Heritage Area whose mission is to enhance the identity of our unique American landscape by preserving and promoting our heritage and by fostering progress for local champions that create authentic, powerful connections between people, culture, and the environment.