Ross Amico surveys the opera/choral/vocal season in and around Trenton, mentioning The Crossing’s two concerts at Princeton’s Wolfensohn Hall October 10 and 11 of David Lang’s The Little Match Girl Passion and my new work, The Consolation of Apollo. The concerts are at 8:00, and are part of the Institute for Advanced Study’s Edward T. Cone Concert Series at Wolfensohn Hall. A lecture follows the Friday October 10 concert. The concerts are free but tickets are required.
The Consolation of Apollo is for choir and percussion. It’s 35 minutes long and combines the Christmas Eve broadcast by the crew of Apollo 8, as they rounded the far side of the moon, with selections from The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius.
The Apollo 8 broadcast famously (and in some quarters, infamously) included the recitation by the astronauts of the first few verses of Genesis, “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth….” This text is mixed together with the prosaic chatter among the crew and Houston as they position the craft for what are now iconic photos of Earth.
The concert will be repeated at The Church of the Holy Trinity on Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, Sunday October 12 at 5:00, a great space to hear this piece!