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Ångström Brass presents: resonances
Join the musicians of Ångström Brass for resonances, a unique concert experience at The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Kansas City, MO
resonances is based around a constellation of emotional vignettes, brought to life through pairings of instrumental music and poetic texts. The title of the program alludes not only to the gorgeous acoustics of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, but also to the mutually enriching emotional “resonances” between the selected poems and musical pairings.
resonances explores themes of love, loss, and living, through the subjectivity, yet universality, of the human experience. This program serves as something of a counterpart to one of our previous concert programs, Memento Mori (Latin for “remember that you will die”).
These programs in some ways run counter to conventional classical performance practices, but follow the continuing evolution of Ångström Brass as a creative force in the chamber music space. For example:
resonances is a one-hour program; in order to allow the audience to be more deeply immersed in the reflective experience, there will be no intermission or applause between pieces.
In lieu of program notes or informative speeches relating historical anecdotes or musical analysis, the poetry readings will orient your emotional, rather than intellectual, experience of the music. This is a slight change of emphasis from our Memento Mori program, in which the music was presented as an opportunity for meditation on scriptural texts.
Thus resonances, without letting the music strictly speak for itself, does not set out to educate. This is not music or poetry that needs to be explained to be felt and understood. We invite you to bring your own life experiences into this moment, and we hope that you leave having felt the resonances.
Every piece on the program was written or arranged by or for Ångström Brass. You will not hear a program like this one anywhere else. The programming for this concert has been fully tailored to the cathedral’s incredible acoustics, using the space almost as an integral member of the ensemble itself.
Insider info: following the success of our Memento Mori program, we wanted to maintain the same format for resonances while also broadening the selection of texts. After reading hundreds of poems searching for texts that we felt were reflective of the emotional content of each musical selection (while also being of an appropriate length, and suitable to a general audience), we arrived at a collection of poetry that contextualizes the music in a way that mere biographical or analytical trivia cannot.
resonances is not built around a single theme in the same way as Memento Mori but functions more like a sculpture which can be viewed from many angles, each of which reveals some parts of the whole while obscuring others.
Like Memento Mori, resonances continues to build off of several threads that have been running through our post-pandemic evolution as an ensemble. We have been playing a lot more newly written music, exploring a wider variety of sound colors, and incorporating spoken-word elements into our performances. We have also played at the cathedral many times for Christmas, Easter, and other special events, giving us a great understanding of how to program for the acoustics.
We hope you will join us for what is sure to be an unforgettable evening.