21 FEBRUARY 2000 FOR IMMEDIATE PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Rachel Brown, (503) 236-8202; Mark Powell, (206) 523-6100

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Cappella Romana presents

Modern Mystical Choral Works for Lent

by Michael Nyman, Arvo P”rt, John Tavener and others

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CAPPELLA ROMANA marks the penitential season of Lent with a program of hauntingly beautiful contemporary music in two churches with resonant, ethereal acoustics.

Heading the concert is Out of the Ruins, a powerful setting of a lament in medieval Armenian by Michael Nyman, known for his film controversial scores for Peter Greenaway. Out of the Ruins was written for a BBC documentary about the 1988 earthquake in Armenia.

Also presented will be music by mystical composers John Tavener and Arvo P”rt in two poignant settings of works by the 7th-century poet St. Andrew of Crete. A work commemorating the 1389 Battle of Kosovo by former Portlander Randall Giles will be sung along with a setting of Psalm 140 by Music Director Alexander Lingas.

The performances will take place in Portland at St. Philip Neri Church, and in Seattle at the beautifully restored Holy Rosary Catholic Church, located 15 minutes from downtown.

A pre-concert lecture at 7:30 pm "Minimalism and Christian Ritual" will be given by Mark Powell, MA candidate in Musicology, University of Washington.

Cappella Music Director Alexander Lingas— currently British Academy Research Fellow at Oxford University's St. Peter's College — will conduct both concerts. Excerpts from this program will also be presented on Cappella's second tour to California in April 2000.

About the Music

Out of the Ruins, a powerful memorial to the victims of the 1988 Armenian Earthquake by British composer Michael Nyman (b. 1944), will dominate the first half of the program. Mr. Nyman has composed numerous film scores for director Peter Greenaway, as well as the music for Jane Campion's film The Piano. Out of the Ruins was commissioned by BBC TV for a documentary first broadcast in 1989 on the first anniversary of the devastating earthquake. Scored for seven-part choir, the work is in Classical Armenian from the Book of Lamentations by the 10th-century mystic Gregory of Narek. Out of the Ruins was first performed and recorded for broadcast by the choir of the Patriarchal Cathedral of Echmiadzin under the direction of Khoren Meykhanejian. The work later formed the musical basis for Mr. Nyman's String Quartet No. 3.

Out of the Ruins will be preceded by two shorter Lenten works from the Orthodox tradition by North American composers. The concert will commence with the ancient Byzantine hymn To You, O Champion Leader as set with additions from the Beatitudes by former Portlander Randall Giles. Dr. Giles took his undergraduate degree at the University of York, under the tutelage of Professor Wilfrid Mellers, while studying privately with Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. He later studied with Sir Harrison Birtwistle.

To You, O Champion Leader was originally composed as the closing chorus of Dr. Giles' moving 1997 oratorio The Ballad of the Death of the Mother of the Jugoivici, the text of which is taken from traditional Serbian ballad cycles commemorating the Battle of Kosovo (1389). It will be followed by Lord, I Cry to You, a setting in Greek of the opening verses of Psalm 140 by Cappella Music Director Alexander Lingas (b. 1965). Based on a traditional Byzantine chant, this work is the third movement from his 1986 Great Vespers, which was premiËred by the Portland State University Chamber Choir under the direction of Dr. Bruce Browne.

The second half of the program will be devoted to two important contemporary settings of moving texts by St. Andrew of Crete (c. 660–c. 740). John Tavener (b. 1944) has established himself as one of England's leading contemporary composers with commissions from many prestigious ensembles and organizations. Since his reception into the Orthodox Church in 1977, an event he likens to "coming home," his compositions have been dominated by works that draw upon the spirituality and musical traditions of the Eastern Church. He has been honored by the government of Greece, which presented him with a special award in recognition of his contributions to Hellenic art. Most recently, his work A New Beginning was broadcast around the world from London's Millennium Dome shortly before midnight on New Year's Eve.

The Ode of St. Andrew of Crete is drawn from a lengthy poem that forms the centerpiece of compline services held throughout the first week of Orthodox Lent. St. Andrew's poem, known as a 'kanon,' is set as a dialogue between a penitent and his soul. The text follows the process of repentance (Greek metanoia, literally 'to change one's mind') from initial inquiry to ruthless self-examination, culminating in prayer for forgiveness. Tavener's setting, which encompasses only the first of nine odes of this kanon, assigns the role of the penitent to a baritone soloist. The soloist's confession is framed by choral refrains that descend through all the major and minor keys, forming what the composer has described as a 'musical prostration.'

Arvo P”rt was born in Paide, Estonia in 1935. In the 1960s Mr. P”rt was a leading member of the Soviet avant-garde until he encountered plainchant in 1967. After a period of artistic reorientation, he began to compose in a hauntingly austere manner that the composer has dubbed his 'tintinnabulli style.' A devout Orthodox Christian, Mr. P”rt ran afoul of the Soviet authorities for composing Credo, a work that boldly opens with the declaration 'I believe in Jesus Christ.' After emigrating to the West in 1980, Mr. P”rt rose to international prominence after being championed by such leading artists as Paul Hillier and Gidon Kremer, both of whom have made landmark recordings of his works on the ECM label.

The Cappella will present Mr. P”rt's 'Prayer after the Kanon,' the intense closing movement of his 1998 Kanon Pokajanen (Kanon of Repentance). The larger work sets the Church Slavonic translation of another penitential poem by St. Andrew of Crete, to which the Prayer acts as a coda. P”rt has said about the Kanon that

I think it concerns all people, but then it is a matter of whether one is prepared to accept what is written there. Like the surgeon's scalpel, it does not work without blood or pain. At first, it ought not to be pleasurable to us, not pleasant, although it is perhaps a little easier to accept with music.

About Cappella Romana

Founded in 1991, Cappella Romana is a vocal chamber ensemble combining passion with scholarship in its continuing exploration of the musical traditions of the Christian West and East, with emphasis on early and contemporary music. Its name is derived from the medieval concept of the Roman oikoumene (inhabited world), which included not only "Old" Rome and Western Europe but also "New Rome" (Constantinople) and its commonwealth of Slavic and Syriac countries.

Flexible in size according to the demands of the repertory, Cappella Romana consists of some of the finest professional singers in the Pacific Northwest. The ensemble has a special commitment to mastering the difficult Slavic and Byzantine repertories in their original languages, making accessible to the general public two great musical traditions that are little-known in the West. Leading scholars have provided the group with their latest discoveries, while its music director Lingas has prepared a number of the ensemble's performing editions from original sources. In the field of contemporary music, Cappella Romana has taken a leading role in bringing West Coast audiences to the works of such European composers as Michael Adamis, Arvo P”rt, and John Tavener, as well as promoting the works of North Americans. The ensemble has also been honored by a ninety-minute broadcast distributed nationwide by Public Radio International. Its first CD, Tikey Zes: Choral Works (Gagliano), was released to great acclaim in both the US and Greece. Most recently the group has recorded a CD of Christmas music from the Byzantine tradition from the 8th to the 20th centuries for release during the summer of 2000.

Dr. Alexander Lingas, Cappella Romana's founder and director, is currently British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Oxford University's St. Peter's College and a Visiting Fellow at its European Humanities Research Centre. He has spoken on BBC Radio 3 and lectured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, whilst scholarly articles by him have been published in London, Rome, and St. Petersburg, Russia. During the summer of 1999 he journeyed to Greece as an Onassis Fellow in order to continue his studies with noted cantor Lycourgos Angelopoulos. His upcoming academic projects include books on Sunday Matins in the Rite of Hagia Sophia and Byzantine experiments in polyphony for Harwood Academic Publishers.

For further information, please call (503) 236-8202 or (206) 523–6100.

Email: mpowell@scn.org

Internet: www.scn.org/arts/cappella