The Collegiate Chorale
presents
the New York Premiere
of

battle hymns

By DAVID LANG
Conducted by JAMES BAGWELL
Directed by TED SPERLING

The Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum
Pier 86
12th Avenue & 46th Street
New York, NY 10036
(646) 202-9623 or www.collegiatechorale.org
May 15, 2014

One drum, 200 voices, at the Intrepid. It can’t get more inspiring than that.

The Collegiate Chorale, the Manhattan Girls Chorus, and the Veteran Artist Program joined forces to perform this contemporary musical interpretation of Civil War era material. Using the words of Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Foster, and others, Pulitzer Prize winner DAVID LANG has created a haunting and evocative exploration of human feelings during some of the most brutal years of United States history.

The singers are on the stage, walking down the aisles, or singing from a balcony facing the rest of the choir. The audience, surrounded by the Hangar Deck of the Intrepid and the voices, cannot help but feel the authenticity and palpable emotion of anyone who has been touched by war. The combined choir includes all ages and races. The young voices, innocent, want to be soldiers. The older voices feel a deeper, mightier force. One selection deals strongly, directly, and effectively with being a master and being a slave. Another uses the words of a devoted soldier’s letter to his beloved wife back home.

The 200 voices alternately sing in unison, counterpoint, and multi-layered polyphony, a sort of vocal Jackson Pollock painting. Complicated and inventive, LANG’s portrait of war compels the audience to experience the hurt, fear, and bravery on a subliminal level. Hypnotic and unsettling, it is not understood in a linear fashion, but rather felt through all the senses and multiple levels of the listener’s being. Eerily disturbing, in constant motion, it is a tsunami of words and tones that washes over the beholder.

DAVID LANG is committed to music that resists classification. This production is no exception. Using his own special outlook, he has created a unique, challenging, and touching vocal tribute to everyone who has suffered during war.

-Karen D’Onofrio-