Minnesota choir looks toward a 'More Hopeful Tomorrow' in opening concert
The Singers will perform Damien Geter's "Cantata for a More Hopeful Tomorrow" Saturday
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To kick off their 19th season, The Singers, a choral group based in Minnesota is performing the regional premiere of a cantata the group hopes will resonate with listeners.
At their last rehearsal before the concert, The Singers practiced Damien Geter’s “Cantata for a More Hopeful Tomorrow.” Originally commissioned by The Washington Chorus in 2020, Geter used a combination of music by Johann Sebastian Bach, spirituals and the words of Walt Whitman to write the piece that reflects on the cataclysmic events of that year.
“I mean, this is a universal theme, right? This notion of moving from fear to hope. And we all felt it, especially in 2020, when we didn't know what the world was gonna look like. Everything that we were used to had been sort of turned upside down and flipped on its head,” Geter said.
In 2022, that theme is still relevant.
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“The Singers have been trying to make sure that we program works that speak to the context of the world that we're living in,” said founding artistic director and conductor Matthew Culloton. “This work stuck out to me.”
Once Culloton got more familiar with the music, he said a central theme of Geter’s piece was how the pandemic hit the Black community. Culloton also considered the deep and tragic reverberations of the police murder of George Floyd.
Culloton decided to partner with cultural organization TruArtSpeaks. The St. Paul-based organization develops arts skills in marginalized communities and leads conversations about race. He also commissioned two of their artists to write spoken word pieces about what they experienced during the pandemic.
Though Culloton says the spoken word performances support the pandemic theme he draws from Geter’s piece, the composer himself responded in an interview with MPR News that it wasn’t on his mind when he wrote it.
“Anytime something bad happens, Black people are gonna be the worst affected, right, so I probably did acknowledge that at some point,” Geter said. “Except the spirituals, there's no other message necessarily directed towards Black folks.”
Regardless of how The Singers came to the decision to focus on racial inequity, the choice seems to be part of a larger undertaking by the choir in the last several years. Bryan Blessing has been with The Singers since the beginning and currently serves as the program advisor.
“It's always, what are the stories we want to tell, and what we want to share in our community,” Blessing said. “Being able to tell stories that maybe aren't as well represented.”
The Singers perform “A More Hopeful Tomorrow” Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at Ted Mann Concert Hall in Minneapolis. A conversation with composer Damien Geter is scheduled for Sunday at Lundstrum Performing Arts.
