MoM3: Sumptuous Planet
The Month of Moderns 2022
David Shapiro, Sumptuous Planet: A Secular Mass (world premiere)
Tawnie Olson, Beloved of the Sky (world premiere)
Friday, July 8, 2022
@ 7pm
Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia
Pre-concert talk with Donald, Tawnie, and David @ 6pm in the Burleigh Cruikshank Memorial Chapel
Post-concert reception on the front lawn of the church.
Please Note: proof of vaccination is required to attend The Month of Moderns 2022; vaccine cards will be checked prior to entry into the concert. In accordance with city and PCCH guidelines, masks are optional, but encouraged.
I stand at the seashore, alone, and start to think.
There are the rushing waves . . . mountains of molecules,
each stupidly minding its own business . . . trillions apart . ..
yet forming white surf in unison.
Ages on ages . . . before any eyes could see . . .
year after year . . . thunderously pounding the shore as now.
For whom, for what? . . . on a dead planet, with no life to entertain.
An expression of belief about the nature of life, and the joy we can find in understanding it, told through Richard Dawkins’ decidedly secular world view, paradoxically organized by David in the shape of a Christian Mass. Sumptuous Planet: A Secular Mass captures the famed biologist’s thoughts on the magnificence and staggering beauty of nature, as well as its utter indifference to our presence here. David’s musical world is one of anticipation and question – there is always another dimension we are invited to consider, to expect, to seek. Here, a Kyrie that reads, “If there is mercy in nature, it is accidental” and a Gloria follows: “Nature is a magnificent structure.”
Postponed from MoM2 (nothing but an idea in our memories), Tawnie Olson’s Beloved of the Sky receives its world premiere. Setting excerpts from Canadian artist Emily Carr’s journals, Tawnie has created a series of vignettes in which words and paint seem to intermingle, capturing Carr’s ideas on creating, aging, juxtapositions, and loneliness.