In Fall 2022, Yunona joined the Boston Based group Shift Orchestra Project and was excited to perform together with this group at a much talked about Mass for the Endangered, on September 11 at the Emmanuel Church. Website of the Shift Orchestra Project: www.shiftorchestraproject.com
The Boston Globe review to follow.
MUSIC REVIEW
Shift Orchestra Project debuts with visually stunning ode to the Earth
The new musical initiative presented Sarah Kirkland Snider's 'Mass for the Endangered' in collaboration with Cappella Clausura.
Conductor David Allen Flowers leads the Shift Orchestra Project and Cappela Clausura performing the multimedia collaboration "Mass for the Endangered" at Emmanuel Church in Boston.
JOSH REYNOLDS FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE
The pandemic unleashed the same kind of destruction on much of the performing arts
ecosystem that a wildfire does on a forest. Like animals fleeing an inferno, workers in all
sectors of the industry shifted gears and career tracks (some of them permanently). But
new growth, however fragile, carries hope and potential.
The Shift Orchestra Project's debut concert Sunday at Emmanuel Church embodied such
new growth. The newborn self-described "musician's collective," which is largely made
up of local young professional musicians and graduate-level conservatory students,
collaborated with the longstanding local vocal ensemble Cappella Clausura to present
Sarah Kirkland Snider's "Mass for the Endangered," a 45-minute piece for chorus and 12
instruments that reimagines the traditional Catholic Mass in honor of the Earth and all
its non-human inhabitants.
With the concert beginning at the unorthodox time of 5:30 p.m. (which was then delayed
by a few minutes on account of the sparks and smoke at Park Street Station) — the sky
clouded over, and the lights in the sanctuary dimmed - the room already had the
contemplative feel of an evensong service, if a somewhat surreal one. There was a mobile
sculpture of gargantuan fabric flowers dangling from the nave and various person-sized
animal puppets scattered throughout the pews, which I later learned were not affiliated
with the Shift performance.
The ensemble itself was almost entirely hidden from view throughout the performance
by a large projection screen. Earlier this year, I listened with interest to the recording of
the piece released on New Amsterdam Records; more recently, I learned that artist
Deborah Johnson, also known as CandyStations, had created an animated visual
counterpart to the entire piece, but I went in not knowing what to expect.
Based on most of my prior multimedia concert experiences, I wasn't expecting too much.
In the first piece, Sven-David Sandström's "To see a world" for unaccompanied chorus
which gets where it's going, which is gorgeous, but takes its time getting there — the
visuals were only a sparse field of twinkling white dots on a black background, which
looked like a screen saver and very well could have been. I wondered if I might end up
closing my eyes for most of the concert.
Five minutes later, I was wishing I didn't have to blink. Johnson's visuals were stunning:
pulsating, panning, expanding and contracting in concordance with the ebb and flow of
the music's dynamics and textures, conducted with invisible grace by Shift director David
Allen Flowers. Slender wireframes and webs onscreen reflected the eerie, shimmering
cadences of Yvonne Cox's solo harp during the "Gloria" movement. In
"Sanctus/Benedictus," the orchestra and chorus flourished like the earth after rain,
accompanied by images of constantly shifting rose windows and heavenly visions with
angels replaced by animals. I would pay to see this again; I'd pay even more to see it in a
space that had the acoustics of Emmanuel Church but the projection facilities of the
Charles Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of Science.
The text, which blended the traditional Latin Mass with poetry by Nathaniel Bellows, was
hard to understand when sung, and hard to read in the darkness, but I scarcely wished
for captions or anything to draw my attention away from the visuals. I was perfectly
satisfied to read it after the lights came up. Before that, however, there was an a cappella
postlude: Ayanna Woods's resolute, chantlike “Bound,” which planted the audience back
on terra firma as the screen again displayed the generic star field: the same, yet not the
same. I, the listener not the image - had been transformed.
Applause was swift and enthusiastic, even more so after three people hauled the screen
away and the audience saw the musicians for the first time and with any luck, not the
last.
THE SHIFT ORCHESTRA PROJECT AND CAPPELLA CLAUSURA
Sept. 11. At Emmanuel Church, Boston.
www.shiftorchestraproject.com;
www.clausura.org
By A.Z. Madonna Globe Staff, Updated September 12, 2022
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