Review of "Hands" premiere by Chicago Classical Review

The Grant Park Chorus, under the director of Christopher Bell, premiered my choral work "Hands" on July 18, 2019 at the Columbus Park Refectory in Chicago. The piece sets the poetry of Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962). This particular poem was written in response to Jeffers' visit to the ancient Esselen people's "Cave of the Hands" near Tassajara, CA. To Jeffers, the multitude of hands painted inside the cave was a reminder that we are part of a continuing chain of humanity and that artistic expression is central to the human experience. 

Of the premiere, Chicago Classical Review wrote: 

The focal point of the program was the world premiere of Lori Laitman's Hands, commissioned by Grant Park on the occasion of Carlos Kalmar's 20th anniversary as festival artistic director and principal conductor. 

The text of Hands is taken from American Robinson Jeffers’s poem, which reflects on a visit to the “Cave of Hands” near Tassajara, California. There a smattering of handprints painted by the ancient Esselen people adorn the cave’s walls. The sight prompted the poet’s stanzas about humanity’s inherent drive toward artistic expression that transcends time.

Laitman’s setting does service to its source material, evoking the mysterious cave in the march-like opening and a smart “chromatic, melismatic melody, rising and falling, as if tracing a hand’s shape from the thumb outward,” as the composer describes in her program notes. Inventively, the piece’s musical material runs tangent to the text through a stylistic mélange of Gregorian chant, Baroque chorale, and 20^th-century minimalism layered one atop the other–suggesting that perhaps all art, like the human experience itself, is instantaneously present in every moment.

The premiere was received warmly, garnering a standing ovation from the capacity audience. After the chorus delivered a briskly paced reading of Thea Musgrave’s quirky On the Underground, Set No 2., Bell invited Laitman and Lita Grier to join the chorus at the front of the stage to acknowledge the applause in a fitting cap to the evening.

The full review can be read here. 

New Mary Oliver choral work commission

The Donald Sinclair Sutherland Music Endowment for the Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church Chancel Choir, under the director of Matthew Robertson, has commissioned a new choral work to premiere in early March 2020. 

Early in my career, Mary Oliver granted me permission to set many of her poems. For this commission, I chose to set her exquisite poem Snowy Night. The poem's theme of appreciation for the natural beauty of the world resonated deeply with me.

I look forward to the premiere, and am grateful to Donald Sutherland for creating the commissioning endowment.

The Royal Conservatory 2019 Voice Series Anthology

I am thrilled that the 2019 Edition of The Royal Conservatory's Voice Anthology includes my Emily Dickinson song If I....

This song is the last of my Four Dickinson Songs. My father, Milton Abraham Laitman, lived to be almost 100. This song was written as a birthday gift for his 80th birthday. It has become one of my most popular songs.

The anthology includes a CD of accompaniment recordings. For more information or to order the book, please click here.

Edinburgh Fringe Festival performances mark the Scottish premiere of The Ocean of Eternity

Soprano Sally Carr, clarinetist Calum Robertson and pianist Anna Michels will be presenting the Scottish premiere of my song cycle The Ocean of Eternity (in a new arrangement for voice, clarinet and piano) at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The cycle sets the poetry of Sri Lankan poet Anne Ranasinghe.

All concerts are in Edinburgh - and will take place as follows:

August 3, 2019, at noon at The Scottish Arts Club

 

August 10, 2019 at 7:30 pm at St. Vincent's Chapel 

August 13, 2019 at 12:30 pm at St. Andrew's and St. George's West Church 

August 14, 2019 at 8 pm at Old Saint Paul's, Episcopal Church 

August 16, 2019 at 1 pm at St. Mary's Episcopal Church 

For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit the Fringe Festival site. 

Upcoming production of The Three Feathers in Singapore

L'Arietta Productions will be producing the abridged version of The Three Feathers from November 18-24, 2019 under the artistic direction of Akiko Otao Larietta. This will mark the first time an opera composed by a woman will be performed in Singapore! 

Commissioned by the Center for the Arts at VA Tech, the opera is a re-telling of a Grimm's fairy tale by poet Dana Gioia. The story presents a young female protagonist, Princess Dora, as its hero. A magic feathers leads the shy, self-doubting princess to an enchanted Underworld ruled by a giant Frog King. Here she summons her courage and compassion to face a series of mysterious and comic adventures that change her life.

Below, a photo from the premiere at The Center for the Arts at VA Tech from October 2014, in a production directed by Beth Greenberg and conducted by Scott Williamson: