Part of the inaugural Constella Festival for the Music and Fine Arts, this concert features compositions by two American legends, Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti. Twentieth-century American music was largely was dominated by these two masters who were steeped in Romantic traditions yet thoroughly individual and contemporary. Between them they owned four Pulitzer Prizes, wrote dozens of operas, and enjoyed international fame that was new to American composers. The older of the two, Samuel Barber, wrote the famed Adagio for Strings, a work recognized around the world as one of the great American contributions to the Western Canon. The younger, Gian Carlo Menotti, established an international festival in Italy and lived to see its forty-ninth anniversary at the age of 95. We celebrate the centenaries of their birth with their stunning and virtuosic choral writing - beautiful, intimate, and always moving.

The Constella Festival of Music and Fine Arts presents unique collaborations between international artists of the highest caliber, in partnership with local performing arts organizations, to spotlight the rich and vibrant musical fabric of Cincinnati. For more information please visit www.constellafestival.org

Featuring:
Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
Choruses from The Lovers
Reincarnations
Twelfth Night / To be sung on the water
Sure on this Shining Night / Heaven haven

Gian Carlo Menotti (1911-2007)
The Twelfth Madrigal, from the Unicorn
Choruses from Landscapes and Remembrances
Agnus Dei from Missa O Pulchritudo

We invite our audience to take a rest from the bustle of the holidays and enter a world of candles, carols, and contemplation. Join us as VAE meditates musically on many of the most cherished tunes of the season, sung in a quiet, reflective atmosphere and presented in a seamless, broad landscape of beauty, memories, and hope. Featuring, Silent Night; O Come, O Come Emmanuel; Lo, how a rose; In the bleak midwinter....and many, many more.

Considered one of the most important neo-classical operas, The Rake's Progress is a taut, brilliant, hilarious outpouring from the 20th-centuries' most prolific and influential composer.

Calling on a variety of instrumental and vocal combinations and musical styles, each work makes a lasting, thought-provoking impression. Highlights include a world premiere by Lansing McLoskey and a cantata by David Lang, composer of last season's moving Little Match Girl Passion.

Featuring:
Alvin Singleton: Truth
An elegant, minimalist work based on a fascinating, episodic text describing how Sojourner Truth got her name

David Lang: Statement to the Court
An important work written in 2010: on a very moving speech of Eugene Debs

Philip Lasser: The Dream Keeper
A secular American cantata on poems of Langston Hughes

Lansing McLoskey: Commissioned World Premiere
This eclectic, wonderful composer based in Miami will compose a new work based on the words of Nigerian activist, playwright, and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka: for clarinet and choir, featuring Ixi Chen