visions & prophecies

• May 16, 2025 | OPERA America’s National Opera Center — with Steinway Artist Jeanne Golan

Each composer featured in this concert program engages their spirituality with a unique musical voice – offering interpretations of uncertainty and transcendence that are grounded in the philosophies and traditions of Theosophy, Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism.

Ruth Crawford Seeger takes on the cosmic void in her Four Preludes for Piano, filling expansive chasms with startling bursts of color. She stretches time with mathematical precision; in her hand, a few measures suddenly rupture into an entirely new field of vision. Conjuring apocalyptic wastelands and immeasurable eternities before the arrival of gods or humans, Crawford Seeger’s Preludes prompt us to wonder if we are ending or beginning, or if the two really differ.

Ernest Bloch’s Visions et Prophéties explores the mystery of divine calling. We hear God emerging through the chaos of time before, through the prescience of the great prophets. Evoking the ancient narratives of the Hebrew Bible, the five movements of Visions et Prophéties offer scenes of early spiritual fervor and reverence.

Much like her other interdisciplinary creations, Meredith Monk’s piano compositions simultaneously place us in the distant past and impermanent present. Each piece questions what is left of humanity’s indelible mark on this earth, and what we as individuals take from our experience of living. The fever of a dance, the memory of a homeland, the games we play together — every moment slips through time, yet, given close attention, is our most precious earthly reward.

This program invites the listener to let the music float somewhere above. I encourage you to close your eyes, find your breath, look at the offered images, daydream, pray, meditate. Our collective experience is made richer by your individual presence, however you find yourself arriving.