Mon Valley Fans of Live Theater Get a Sumptuous Taste of Future Possibilities

 

The Music of This Love Between Us Pictured: Last night's rehearsal for Reena Esmail's This Love Between Us Orchestra rehearsals are underway for This Love Between Us, and last night we had the incredible experience of bringing together our chorus, vocal soloists, and tabla and sitar guest artists with our Resonance Chamber Orchestra for the first time, which was electrifying. We are falling more in love with this program every day, and can’t wait to share it with you in just two days!  Do you have your tickets yet?  J.S. Bach’s ebullient Magnificat is a landmark in the composer’s impressive output, foreshadowing the scope and grandeur of his largest works despite its comparatively concise nature. Soloists, chorus, and orchestra all have opportunities to shine in dazzling melismatic textures and triumphant fanfares, with a text that offers a message of hope for the future of humanity.  Reena Esmail’s This Love Between Us: Prayers for Unity was designed to be performed alongside this 300 year old masterwork, brilliantly and beautifully weaving western and Indian classical music traditions, adding tabla and sitar to Bach’s Magnificat orchestration. The structure and details of Esmail’s music serve as a deeply layered metaphor not only for the texts she sets from seven different religious traditions, but for her own artistic mission of bringing communities together through the "creation of equitable musical spaces" - a mission that Resonance Works and I share.  The message of this piece and this program reflects the kinds of experiences we aim to create for our artists and audience, celebrating the dazzling diversity of music, cultures, and perspectives, and through it all, the connection of our common humanity. There are those pieces that you love more and more with every moment you spend with them - music that touches the depths of your being.  This Love Between Us has become one of those special pieces for me. Preparing this program with this amazing assembly of artists has been one of my greatest joys. It is our privilege to share it with you this weekend.  I hope you will join us for the experience. With gratitude, Maria Sensi Sellner  Artistic & General Director, Founder P.S. I'll be live on WQED-FM today at a little after 4 p.m. with soloists Tahanee Aluwihare, Gene Stenger, and Michael Griska -- tune in to 89.3 FM (or stream from wqed.org) for a lively chat about the program! Listen: Reena Esmail's trio version of This Love Between Us Experience Reena Esmail’s ravishing musical language with this performance, featuring the composer herself at the piano alongside her husband, Vijay Gupta, on violin and mezzo-soprano Lindsay Patterson Abdou. Based on the fifth movement of This Love Between Us, Esmail wrote this trio arrangement "for my husband, as a gift we could play together... We premiered this version of the piece a few years later, on our wedding day."  Hear the original on February 2 and 4th! Meet the instrumentalists of This Love Between Us! Violinist and Resonance Works favorite, Maureen Conlon Gutierrez returns to our stage for Nkeiru Okoye’s Breaking Bread, which acts as an invocation for this program. She will also play in the ensemble, acting as concertmaster for This Love Between Us and Magnificat. Maureen is a familiar face to Pittsburgh audiences, and we are honored to have her share her artistry with us again.  “I'm excited to get to know the work by Reena Esmail, This Love Between Us since it's also unfamiliar to me. As always, Maria Sensi Sellner has a real knack for finding some real gems!” University of Pittsburgh alum Vikram Mukherjee makes his exciting Resonance Works debut, playing the tabla in This Love Between Us. Vikram began studying tabla at age six, and is under the guidance of his guru, internationally renowned tabla virtuoso Pandit Samir Chatterjee. Born in Mechanicsburg, PA, Vikram currently lives in Dothan, Alabama, where he is a medical student. “...Tabla is not purely a percussive instrument. It is one of the very few drums that is constantly being tuned to a pitch and thus is very melodic. It is also one of the very few drums that has its own language, which is used to express many different ideas from life and nature." Sitar player Michael Griska joins us for This Love Between Us, making his Resonance Works debut. The Pittsburgh native performs and teaches Hindustani music on the sitar and surbahar. He is a senior disciple of world-renowned sarod player, Pandit K. Sridhar.  Michael has traveled from Europe to India studying, performing, and accompanying his Guruji, Pandit K. Sridhar. “This music is more of a spiritual practice, a life’s pursuit, a way to vibrate the body to its fullest potential.” Friday, February 2 at 7:30 pm Trinity Cathedral, Downtown Sunday, February 4 at 4:00 pm Fox Chapel Presbyterian Church featuring: Samina Aslam, Tahanee Aluwihare, Gene Stenger, Paul Chwe MinChul An, Katy Williams, Michael Griska, Vikram Mukherjee, and Maureen Conlon Gutierrez Resonance Chamber Orchestra & Festival Chorus Maria Sensi Sellner, conductor Get Your Tickets!

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