From 12–18 June, Ēriks will be joining Steven Sametz, the Ronald J. Ulrich Professor of Music at Lehigh University and Artistic Director of The Princeton Singers, as mentor-composer for the 2023 Lehigh Choral Composers Forum at the Zoellner Arts Center, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA. The Lehigh Choral Composers Forum, in association with the ACDA, offers composers an opportunity to work on their compositional ideas during a weeklong intensive seminar and have their works rehearsed, performed and recorded in the 900-seat Baker Hall by The Princeton Singers. Ēriks will co-lead seminars in the morning and offer one-on-one time in the afternoon.
Both Esenvalds albums Gramophone Magazine choral recordings of the month
Gramophone Magazine has named albums of Eriks Esenvalds music for consecutive Choral Album of the Month awards. The rare honour is the result of 2 performances from choirs on the west coast of the USA.
There Will Come Soft Rains, performed by Pacific Lutheran University Choir of the West under the direction of Richard Nance is on the Signum label.
Translations, performed by Portland State Chamber Choir under the direction of Ethan Sperry is on the Naxos label.
VOCES8 album release After Silence III – Redemption
VOCES8 has released the latest part of their “After Silence” project. This is the third offering, called Redemption.
Track listing:
1. Spaséñiye, sodélal – Pavel Chesnokov
2. The Long Road – Ēriks Ešenvalds
3. Rückert Lieder: No. 4, Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen – Gustav Mahler
Featuring Mary Bevan, soprano and Nick Deutsch, oboe
4. The Road Home – Stephen Paulus
5. Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich, BWV 150 – J. S. Bach
Featuring the Academy of Ancient Music
Redemption is available on Spotify and Apple Music.
New Ešenvalds album by Portland State Chamber Choir on Naxos
Translations, the new Ešenvalds album by Portland State Chamber Choir and Ethan Sperry has been released on the Naxos label and is available for purchase, download, and streaming now. The album is the sequel to The Doors of Heaven (Naxos 2017) and features seven works, including the world premiere recording of Translation (2016) on a text by Oregon’s poet laureate Paulann Petersen.
The album explores the idea of ‘translation’ or the transformations that occur within us when we encounter the power of nature, legends, or the divine. PSCC conductor Ethan Sperry: ‘Each piece of Ešenvalds’ music addresses our essential nature — from the frustrations at our limitations to our desire to touch the divine — and translates this into musical language that moves us to our very core, deepening our understanding of what it means to be human.’
Listen to previews and order, download, or stream Translations.
Watch a release video on YouTube here.
Tracklist:
1. O salutaris hostia
2. The Heavens’ Flock
3. Translation
4. My Thoughts / Мысли мои
5. Vineta
6. The Legend of the Walled-In Woman
7. In paradisum
Translations was recorded in 2019 at St Mary’s Catholic Church in Mount Angel, Oregon, with producer Erick Lichte, and engineers John Atkinson and Doug Tourtelot.
New all-Ešenvalds album released by Choir of the West
There Will Come Soft Rains is the new all-Ešenvalds album by Pacific Lutheran University’s Choir of the West and Richard Nance, released on Signum and is available for purchase or streaming now.
See a short clip on the collaboration and recording process on PLU’s website and listen to Spring Rain, Stars as well as the title track There Will Come Soft Rains.
The tracklist represents some of Eriks best-loved works:
There Will Come Soft Rains
New Moon
Long Road
Rivers of Light
Northern Lights
Only in Sleep
O, She Doth Teach The Torches To Burn Bright
A Soldier’s Mother’s Lullaby
Spring Rain
My Little Picture Frame
Evening
My Luve Is Like A Red, Red Rose
Stars
Amazing Grace
The Choir of the West is the premier choral ensemble of the Department of Music at Pacific Lutheran University, located in Tacoma, Washington. The choir was founded in 1926, and was the third Lutheran college choir to tour extensively throughout the United States. Choir of the West has toured to Europe, Scandinavia, Japan and China, and has been selected to appear at several regional and national conferences of the National Association for Music Education and the American Choral Directors Association. In November of 2015 the choir was a featured ensemble at the National Collegiate Choral Organization Conference, held in Portland, Oregon, performing with renowned conductor Simon Carrington. During the summer of 2011, Choir of the West competed among choirs from 47 nations at the prestigious Harmonie Festival in Lindenholzhausen, Germany, winning two gold certificates and one silver. In 2015 the choir competed in the Anton Bruckner Choir Competition, held in Linz, Austria.
VOCES8 new album “Enchanted Isle” released
VOCES8 has released its new album, “Enchanted Isle”. Casting a contemporary eye on the landscape they call home this mixed repertoire album contains music from composers including Sir John Tavener, Ēriks Ešenvalds, Thomas Adès, Samuel Barber, Jake Runestad, Toby Hession and Dan Forrest plus a selection of newly arranged folk songs from arrangers Jim Clements, Matt Sheeran, Geoff Lawson, Joshua Pacey and others. One featured soloist is the amazing voice of Sibéal singing Carrickfergus (video here).
Already at the top of classical charts on release day, Barney and Andrea appeared on the UK’s Sky News to talk about the release as well as the group’s ongoing education work based around the VOCES8 Method.
Further album videos are Enya’s “May it be” (filmed at the Gresham Centre) and Radiohead’s “Pyramid Song”
Eriks Esenvalds music featured in Latvia 100 Celebrations
Latvia 100
Latvia’s centenary celebrations culminated on 18 November at the Proclamation Day of the Republic of Latvia. Among the major cultural events was a large-scale performance on the embankments of the river Daugava in central Riga. Experienced by more than 100,000 people and broadcasted live on national television, ‘Saules mūžs’, which translates as ‘Lifetime of the Sun’, combined music and a choreography of lights and pyrotechnics and told the story of the Latvian state, from its foundation to the present day. The music score was composed by Ēriks and Kristaps Krievkalns and included fragments of Latvia’s musical history as well as arrangements of Ēriks’ own works. See the full 25-minute coverage of the event by Latvian Public Broadcasting.
On the eve before Latvia’s Independence Day, Ēriks’ new work ‘Arirang’ was premiered by the Camarata Chamber Singers and conductor Dr Ryan Goessl at Spazio Luce Art Hall in Itaewon, Seoul. It was commissioned on the occasion of Latvia’s centenary for the Latvian Embassy in Seoul by Kyung-Hoon Kwon, Honorary Consul General of Latvia in South Korea. The Camarata Chamber Singers were joined by Latvia’s Emīls Darziņš Mixed Choir and conductor Nora Kalniņa, who are in South Korea for a tour of five concerts in Seoul and Pyeongtaek. The new work quotes two folks songs: the ‘Arirang’ from the Korean Peninsula and Latvia’s ‘Stāvēju, dziedāju’ or ‘Singing I Stood’. Dubbed the unofficial national anthem of Korea, the Arirang is estimated to be more than 600 years old and to have about 3,600 variations of 60 different versions. It is inscribed on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list with local variations from both South and North Korea.
Eriks Esenvalds BBC Proms premiere
Eriks Esenvalds has his debut Proms premiere today in front of a sell-out Royal Albert Hall. The concert features the Proms Youth Choir and Academy, conducted by Simon Halsey who will start the concert with “A Shadow”, a piece for a cappella choir. The concert continues with music by Britten and Beethoven.The picture shows Eriks and Simon Halsey in rehearsal with the Proms Youth Choir.
A Shadow will be available to purchase after the premiere, published by Musica Baltica.
Eriks Esenvalds premiere at the Grant Park Music Festival
The Pleiades, commission for orchestra and chorus
Eriks is in Chicago this week to hear his new work The Pleiades, commissioned by the Grant Park Music Festival. Performed by the Grant Park orchestra and chorus and conducted by Carlos Kalmar, the multi-movement work takes the Pleiades star constellation as its theme, and uses stories and myths from native American culture. See more about this at Eriks own website here. It is not the first time the stars and sky have fascinated him: the piece called Stars has become a staple of many choirs concert programmes, and in recent years the Nordic Light multimedia symphony has enjoyed success.
The Grant Park Festival coincides with this year’s Chorus America convention in Chicago, and Eriks will take a seat as panellist on a discussion entitled Creating Music in Challenging Times. Following his time in Chicago Eriks will go on to St John’s Newfoundland, Canada to be part of the Podium on the Edge: Singing from Sea to Sea to Sea convention.
Eriks website is www.eriksesenvalds.com
Choir of Royal Holloway perform at Holy Week Festival
Monday 26th March at 6pm Saint John’s Smith Square, London
Monday 26th March at 6pm
St John’s Smith Square, London
As part of the Holy Week Festival curated by the choir Tenebrae, the Choir of Royal Holloway under the direction of Rupert Gough will give an hour’s recital at London’s St John’s Smith Square in March 26th. Called “Into the Night”, the programme is an exotic mix of sacred and secular music features composers from the USA, Lithuania and Latvia. The opening works by Ēriks Ešenvalds and René Clausen set evocative American poetry by Sara Teasdale and Walt Whitman. Appropriately for Holy Week the images of night and death are intertwined as the programme moves from Morton Lauridsen’s three Nocturnes to a setting of the Tenebrae responsory by Lithuanian Vytautas Miškinis and concludes with settings of contemporary Latvian poetry.
Ēriks Ešenvalds Evening
René Clausen A clear midnight
Morton Lauridsen Nocturnes
Vytautas Miškinis Dum medium silentium
Vytautas Miškinis Tenebrae
Arturs Maskats Lugums naktij ‘Prayer to the night’
Ēriks Ešenvalds Long Road
See more about the concert and book tickets here.
The choir’s website is www.chapelchoir.co.uk
