Visions of Silence

chapter of music history and reveling in how it all fits together.

VISIONS OF SILENCE is a transcendent and highly meditative show full of new and old music, built around a dramatic presentation of Salvatore Sciarrino's 1998 "Ecstasy in One Act," Infinito Nero, for voice and 8 instruments. The scene is fascinating: Maria Maddalene de Pezzi was a 17th century saint and mystic who experienced visions, during which she spoke so sporadically but so lighting-fast that it took 8 scribes (hence the 8 instruments) to write it down. The 30-minute work is intensely suspenseful, rarely louder than a faint whisper, requiring a virtuosic level of hyper-focus from the performers. The incredible soprano Alice Teyssier is our featured soloist, with Artistic Director Jacob Ashworth conducting.
The full program opens with a deep meditation: American experimentalist Alvin Lucier’s Music for Piano with Amplified Sonorous Vessels, performed by CP's own Daniel Schlosberg. Out of Lucier’s bold concert opener flows Tarquinio Merula's extraordinary and unique 1636 Canzonetta spirituale sopra alla nanna — a lullaby of Mary trying to get Jesus to sleep, which isn't going well. Following the Merula, Cantata Profana is very proud to be presenting the New York premiere, thirty years after its original composition of Symphony No. 5 by the spirit of the Russian resistance, Galina Ustvolskaya. One of our favorite composers who is absolutely never programmed, Ustvolskaya scored her Symphony, titled “Amen", for the odd ensemble of violin, oboe, trumpet, tuba, big wooden box, and speaker. The text is simply the lord's prayer, but the effect is disturbing, violent, and strangely inert all at the same time. Lastly, CP's Arash Noori performing Alessandro Piccinini’s Toccata Cromatica for solo lute draws us back to the still reflection of the Lucier and sets the scene for Sciarrino's masterpiece.

From Artistic Diector Jacob Ashworth: 
“The experience of this program is going to be deeply personal for the listener. These are powerful works we are performing, with starkly different perspectives, each transporting the audience somewhere extremely rare. I want this show to feel utterly unique. For time to stop.” 
WATCH THE SHOW TRAILER HERE

Praise for Cantata Profana:
A “crack ensemble” (New Yorker) with “a taste for the dramatic” (New York Times), Cantata Profana is passionately dedicated to new music, old music “to most anything, so long as the mixture is put together thoughtfully and put across persuasively” (New York Times). Our artists are specialists in a dizzying array of musical genres, able to transform themselves from “a stylish early music ensemble” (New York Times) into “exacting and sensitive” performers of contemporary music (Boston Globe) all within one show.