Name: Spirare IV (2024) for Pierrot Ensemble by Carlos Bandera
Duration: 8 min 19 s
Description: Written for and premiered by Ensemble Linea conducted by Jean-Philippe Wurtz

molto flautando e pianissimo

Written for and premiered by Ensemble Linea conducted by Jean-Philippe Wurtz

Spirare IV (2024) for Pierrot Ensemble

Performed at Le CENTQUATRE-PARIS, on the 19th and 20th of September 2024 as part of the IRCAM Cursus concert.

Julie Michael (viola)
Pedram Diba (électronique Ircam)
Aria de la Celle (diffusion sonore Ircam)
Claudia Jane Scroccaro (RIM)
Pierre Jodlowski, Simone Conforti, Claudia Jane Scroccaro, Grégoire Lorieux, Sébastien Naves, Jean Lochard (Ircam pedagogical team)

Pazhvak Astaneh

Missa Laudato Si’ (2023–25)
for Six Singers, SATB Chorus, Treble Chorus, and 12 Instruments
여섯명의 솔로이스트, 합창단, 높은 음 합창단, 열 두 악기를 위한, “찬미받으소서 미사"

I. KYRIE ELEISON
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species

II. GLORIA
Canticle of the Creatures

III. AGNUS DEI
Refugee; quasi una poesia

IV. ITE, MISSA EST
One person’s truth
Original text by Shiva Ryu, trans. by Dongryul Lee

Commissioned by The EcoVoice Project

World premiere live recording
New Earth Ensemble, Ignatian Voices, University Singers, and University Chorale 
Kirsten Hedegaard, conductor 
March 2025, Madonna della Strada Chapel, Chicago
Video and Audio director: Garry Grasinski

New Earth Ensemble
Lydia Walsh Rock, soprano
Tiana Sorenson, soprano
Gabrielle Timofeeva López, alto
Steven Wilson, tenor
Joe Labozetta, baritone
John Orduña, bass

Claudia Cryer, fl
Deb Stephenson, ob
Michael Tran, cl
Ben Riodl Ward, bsn
John Corkill, perc
Nolan Ehlers, perc
Ben Melsky, hp
Chungho Lee, pf
Caitlin Edwards, vn 1
Sarah Kim, vn 2
Vannia Phillips, vla
Matthew Agnew, vlc

Program notes
Missa Laudato Si’ is a new mass written in the spirit of Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’, where he deplored: “For human beings to degrade the integrity of the earth by causing changes in its climate, [...] for human beings to contaminate the earth’s waters, its land, its air, and its life – these are sins.” In the form of a Mass, it contemplates climate change and caring for the earth by intertwining the Latin Mass text with prayers, poems, and texts about contaminated soil and water, and all the threatened creatures living under the climate and plastic crises, including “the tragic effects of environmental degradation on the lives of the world’s poorest.”

When Kirsten approached me in the summer of 2023 with her vision of creating a new ecological mass setting, I saw significant possibilities. I view this opportunity to create a mass, one of the oldest musical art forms, as a vehicle to convey forward-looking perspectives and propose an emotional and spiritual solution to one of humanity’s most urgent and critical issues, focusing on the voices of the earth and the marginalized.

The mass encompasses a full spectrum of human expression, including forgiveness, anger, lament, celebration, despair, joy, faith, awe, and mercy. It adapts the traditional Missa Solemnis by omitting the Credo and Sanctus, while adding an Ite, Missa est section—with texts from Canticle of the Creatures by Saint Francis of Assisi, the poem Refugee by Syrian poet Abdullah Kasem Al Yatim (used with permission) with my own contribution, endangered species data from the IUCN Red List (used with permission), the poem One Person’s Truth by Korean Zen poet Shiva Ryu, and prayers from Pope Francis’s Missa Laudato Si’. In Agnus Dei, Al Yatim’s poem is paired with an AI-generated translation into ancient Syriac/Aramaic—a language closely related to what Jesus and the apostles spoke. Additional sound materials include my research on the Earth’s Schumann resonance—its low-frequency electromagnetic “breath”—and my adaptation of the Arabic Maqam scale.

Pragmatically, Missa Laudato Si’ is designed to be performed by university-level choir singers. The performance difficulty is meticulously calibrated so that student singers can actively participate, supported by graduate-level/professional performers who handle the more virtuosic material. I aim for this opportunity to be a transformative experience for students, deepening their understanding of the interconnectedness of our planet and cultivating awareness of our spiritual connection to the rest of creation.

Missa Laudato Si’ was premiered in March 2025 by Loyola’s Ignatian Voices, University Chorale, and University Singers, together with the New Earth Ensemble from The EcoVoice Project. It is commissioned by The EcoVoice Project, and dedicated to Pope Francis, in memoriam, and to Kirsten Hedegaard, with deep admiration.

Missa Laudato Si’ (2023–25), IV. ITE, MISSA EST–One person’s truth

Michael Hersch
Images from a Closed Ward (no. IX)
FLUX Quartet

artwork by Michael Mazur

Images from a Closed Ward (no. IX)

This piece was made as the first miniProject during my cursus in IRCAM 2025

BADTRIP_ADVISOR_#2 for electronics

Presented here as excerpts from a choral adaptation developed with the Renaissance Singers, After Life was originally conceived as a piece for solo vocalist (intoning) and ensemble of open instrumentation (grounding/haloing). 

The many influences and inspirations I drew on while writing the text and music include time, cycles, loops, periodicity, astronomy, astrology, the spheres, climate change, vibration, entrainment, scales, solfege, phenomenology, embodied acoustic subjectivity, intimate acoustics, love languages, W. A. Mathieu's book "Harmonic Experience," and the poetry of Robert Lax. The score is written as a melody for the vocalist and a text score for the ensemble which describes two modes of supporting and responding to the soloist, inviting the rest of the group to move between those roles.

Thanks to Antoine Beuger who encouraged me to let this piece become itself, to Chris Wild and Jenna Lyle who originally commissioned this piece for their group Après l'Histoire, and to everyone in the Renaissance Singers for making this reincarnation of After Life possible.

After Life (Renaissance) 2025.6.3

for amplified violin, premiered by Josh Modney at McClintock Coral and Recital Room, Northwestern University.

but the unknown [amplified solo violin]

Supra Temps Amalgamat (World Premiere)

Bent Frequency. Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
March 9, 2025.

Supra Temps Amalgamat (USA Premiere)

Three Dreams for tenor, piano, and string quartet

Commissioned by Miguel Zazueta

Performed by Miguel Zazueta (tenor), Kyle Adam Blair (piano), and Quartet Nouveau (Batya MacAdam-Somer, Missy Lukin, violins; Annabelle Terbetski, viola; Elizabeth Brown, cello)

Conrad Prebys Concert Hall, UC San Diego, 05.22.25

I. The Dream Keeper (Langston Hughes)
II. Sueño Despierto (José Martí)
III. In Tall Grass (Carl Sandburg) / Primero Sueño (Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz)


The Dream Keeper - Langston Hughes

Bring me all of your dreams, 
You dreamers. 
Bring me all of your 
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them 
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too rough fingers
Of the world. 


Sueño despierto - José Martí

Yo sueño con los ojos
Abiertos, y de día
Y noche siempre sueño.
Y sobre las espumas
Del ancho mar revuelto,
Y por entre las crespas
Arenas del desierto,
Y del león pujante,
Monarca de mi pecho,
Montado alegremente
Sobre el sumiso cuello,
Un niño que me llama
Flotando siempre veo.

 
In Tall Grass - Carl Sandburg

Bees and a honeycomb in the dried head of a horse in a pasture corner—a skull in the tall grass and a buzz and a buzz of the yellow honey-hunters.       

And I ask no better a winding sheet
                             (over the earth and under the sun.) 

Let the bees go honey-hunting with yellow blur of wings in the dome of my head, in the rumbling, singing arch of my skull.     

Let there be wings and yellow dust and the drone of dreams of honey—who loses and remembers?—who keeps and forgets? 

In a blue sheen of moon over the bones and under the hanging honeycomb the bees come home and the bees sleep.

 
from Primero Sueño - Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Piramidal, funesta de la tierra
nacida sombra, al cielo encaminaba
de vanos obeliscos punta altiva,
escalar pretendiendo las estrellas;
si bien sus luces bellas
esemptas siempre, siempre rutilantes,
la tenebrosa guerra
que con negros vapores le intimaba
la vaporosa sombra fugitiva
burlaban tan distantes,
que su atezado ceño
al superior convexo aún no llegaba
del orbe de la diosa
que tres veces hermosa
con tres hermosos rostros ser ostenta;

quedando sólo dueño
del aire que empañaba
con el aliento denso que exhalaba.

Y en la quietud contenta […]

Three Dreams, for tenor, piano, and string quartet

Composed by Beat Furrer
Performed by Nina Dante and Dalia Chin

Spirare IV (2024) for Pierrot Ensemble

Carlos Bandera

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