Combined News

It stands to reason that having originally launched on the eve of the U.S. bicentennial, the 21st Century Consort’s half-century mark would come on the edge of the country’s 250th. We’ve been here for a fifth of the nation’s history! In those early days we were still licking the wounds of the 60s and Vietnam War, and finding out about Nixon’s Cointelpro operation. For its part, “serious” contemporary music responded to the period by eschewing untimely warm and fuzzy emotions and hewing instead to objectivist serial orthodoxy. 

It was a tough time to create satisfyingly designed programs of new music. We stirred in ample helpings of Debussy, Stravinsky and Bartok to achieve a balance of the challenging and accessible. Now, new music has opened to practically everything, so that programs of strictly new work can range from serious to silly to cerebral to moving and onward ad infinitum. It’s a music curator’s candy store. 

So, as we shove off on a second half-century in our trusty Consort vessel – entering deeply troubled waters – we marvel at having sailed so far in these sometimes rough, sometimes silky seas. It’s been a wonderful aesthetic adventure, deserving, we figure, a protracted celebration, last year and this season. This evening’s particular program is happening 50 years and a week to the day since the Consort’s first embarkation, at the Lincoln Gallery of the Smithsonian’s then-Gallery of Fine Arts (now SAAM). So much has changed, but the Consort’s excitement and enduring commitment to sharing new music with our audience hasn’t. 

Much of tonight’s program places our half century in relation to ancient times: Sofia Gubaidulina’s work, inspired by the 12th century abbess Hildegard von Bingen and sung by the wonderful artist longest associated with the Consort, Lucy Shelton; startlingly complicated music from the late middle ages arranged by Folger Consort colleague for over 50 years, Robert Eisenstein; George Crumb’s ineffable setting of Garcia Lorca’s musings on ancient themes sung by the inimitable Jane Sheldon and the “ancient child”’s voice of Sarah Oler; and Juri Seo’s musings on the denizens of medieval bestiaries, re-imagined via a very contemporary, aquatic sound world.  

I have often announced new Consort seasons as “launches” in the nautical sense (ironic for a confirmed landlubber). This time, we really do have a sea theme happening, with Lorca’s “I have lost myself in the sea many times,” Stephen Jaffe’s “Sea Light” composed for and performed by our own Lisa Emenheiser, and Juri Seo’s monsters of the deep, for which I’ve prepared by rereading Moby-Dick.

• Who’s Counting?

  at 5pm on Saturday October 182025
  with pre-performance discussion at 4pm

  NOTE CHANGE OF LOCATION TO: Katzen Arts Center of American University, Abramson Recital Hall (click here for details)

  Sofia Gubaidulina

  Aus den Visionen der Hildegard von Bingen

  George Crumb

  Ancient Voices of Children

  Stephen Jaffe

  Sea Light

  Guillaume de Machaut

  Rosa, lis / Gais et jolis

  Francois Andrieu

  Armes, amour

  Magister Grimace

  A l’arme, a l’arme

  Juri Seo

  Sea Monsters (world premiere)