Celebrating its 50th anniversary this season, Orchestra of St. Luke’s presents several performances in the innovative Visionary Sounds series at The DiMenna Center for Classical Music.
December 4 marks the world premiere of 2018 MacArthur Fellow and AMOC* co-founder Matthew Aucoin’s Revelations of Divine Love, Chapter III, newly arranged for baritone and piano quintet and sung by John Brancy.
“The medieval mystic Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love is one of the strangest and most searingly potent visionary texts ever written,” notes Aucoin. “When she was thirty years old, Julian fell gravely ill and believed her death was imminent. As she lay sick, she had a series of visions (“shewings”) of Jesus, which she described in writing after her unexpected recovery. I’m drawn to texts that tell of experiences that are right on the border between the religious and the erotic: I’ve explored this ambiguity in pieces like This Earth, which sets a tantalizing passage from Dante’s Purgatorio.”
Mezzo-soprano Megan Moore performs Aucoin’s This Earth on the December 4 concert, along with Purcell’s aria “When I Am Laid in Earth” from Dido and Aeneas, with Aucoin on piano.
Augusta Read Thomas – who is also leading the fifth season of OSL’s DeGaetano Composition Institute along with conductor Brad Lubman – curates the third “Visionary Sounds” concert on April 30, 2025 which includes her chamber works …a circle around the sun... and Toft Serenade, as well as Joan Tower’s For Marianne.
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