World premiere: Tyler Futrell: Rest – Requiem for strings and voices
Thursday March 14, 19:00
(Doors open at 18:00)
Oslo Cathedral
Adult: 450 NOK
Senior/student: 350 NOK
Child: 100 NOK
Duration: 1 hour and 20 minutes
Ensemble Allegria
The Norwegian Soloists’ Choir
Grete Pedersen, conductor
The Church Music Festival has rarely experienced so much positive, overwhelming, and genuine feedback as after the world premiere of Tyler Futrell’s Stabat Mater in 2022. Futrell has a unique ability to combine aestheticism and realism, to create something that is intellectually stimulating, but that first and foremost speaks to people’s hearts. We therefore wanted to commission a new requiem by Futrell, which will be performed for the first time by Ensemble Allegria and the Soloists’ Choir under the direction of Grete Pedersen. Futrell wanted to use the traditional requiem texts, as well as a series of more modern texts, especially poems Rolf Jacobsen wrote after losing his wife. The texts are about death, our relationship to it, and what it represents in our lives. Futrell says about his Requiem:
‘I wanted to write a requiem from a humanist perspective, a requiem that speaks to those of us left, that reflects the unresolved feelings of loss many of us are carrying and trying to process. We mourn, we miss, sometimes we are even angry for being abandoned, or angry at ourselves for what we didn’t do when we had the chance. I use parts of the traditional Latin text and the thematic structure, but at the same time bend them to reflect a mourning process, and mix in various other texts in different languages from different time periods, to reflect the constantly moving cloud of ideas around death we have to deal with. I use these texts to place the audience in a more immediate contact with their own experiences, something that thousand-year-old Latin texts about eternal light might not be able to do – even though it is one of the images that the piece has to acknowledge. Rest is an English translation of requiem, which is what a requiem traditionally asks for on behalf of the dead, but which is also something the mourners need themselves. The title can also refer to what is left: memories, remains.’
The Soloists’ Choir and Ensemble Allegria also perform Spem in alium and
If ye love me by Thomas Tallis, Vaughan Williams’ Tallis Variations, and Misericordia Domini KV 222 by W.A. Mozart.
Ensemble Allegria has its name from the Italian word allegria, which means joy, and it was the joy of playing together that led to a group of music students founding an orchestra in 2007. Ensemble Allegria is known for combining high artistic quality with spontaneity and flexibility. The orchestra consists of 26 permanent musicians and has since the beginning been run by the musicians themselves, under the artistic direction of Maria Angelika Carlsen. Ensemble Allegria has played all of the big music festivals in Norway and collaborated with several leading soloists, such as Tine Thing Helseth, Martin Fröst, Truls Mørk, Lawrence Power, Kathryn Stott, and Benjamin Schmid. The ensemble has released four recordings, two of which were nominated to Spellemanprisen (The Norwegian Grammy Awards), and has worked closely with the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir for several years.
The Norwegian Soloists’ Choir is an innovative ensemble with a rich history. The Soloists’ Choir consists of 26 professional singers with a great expressiveness. Their repertoire includes newly written music, folk music, and classics from the choir literature. The albums Bach: The Motets and Luciano Berio: Coro received the prestigious French award Diapason d’or de l’année (‘best choral album of the year’). The recording Lament received Spellemannprisen (the Norwegian Grammy Awards) in the category ‘contemporary’ in 2020, and Meins lebens licht was also nominated for Spellemannprisen. The choir has received the Gammleng award and has been named performer of the year by the Norwegian Society of Composers. The Soloists’ Choir has received the prestigious Norwegian Critics Prize twice (1957/58 and 2021/2022).
Grete Pedersen is known for her performances within both Baroque music, classical repertoire, and contemporary music. Through an extensive concert activity nationally and internationally, as well as radio, TV, and album recordings, she has become one of Scandinavia’s most prominent conductors. Pedersen is trained as a church musician and conductor with a diploma in conducting from the Norwegian Academy of Music from 1988, and has studied under Terje Kvam and Eric Ericson. She is employed as a professor in choir conducting at the Norwegian Academy of Music, and has since 1990 been the conductor for the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir. In 2010, she was awarded the Music Critics Award, and has previously received the Norwegian Choir Association’s special award for her work with Oslo Chamber Choir.
Tyler Futrell (b.1983) is based in Oslo, but is originally from California, USA. He studied composition under Bent Sørensen at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, under Lee Hyla at New England Conservatory, and Michael Jarrell at Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien. Since moving to Norway in 2010, Futrell has worked with ensembles and festivals such as Ultima, Borealis, the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir, the Engegård Quartet, Song Circus, and Trondheim Sinfonietta. Outside of Norway, his works have been performed by London Contemporary Orchestra Soloists (UK), Athelas Sinfonietta (DK), Esbjerg Ensemble (DK), and Curious Chamber Players (SE), to mention a few.
Photo: Ensemble Allegria: Helge Brekke, Det Norske Solistkor: Bård Gundersen, Grete Pedersen: Telenor, Tyler Futrell: privat
