C4 (The Choral Composer/Conductor Collective): Rockquiem, May 29, 30, 2025, 8:00 PM

Dear Friends, Family, and Colleagues,

Though I am a child of the 1960s and 70s who grew up with the pop and rock music of that era, it is only recently that I started attempting to incorporate the musical vernacular of my misspent youth into my work as a composer. A few years ago I began setting John Keats’ The Eve of St. Agnes, for soloists, choir, and a chamber orchestra comprised not only of traditional “classical” instruments, but also including two electric (and acoustic) guitars, an electric bass, and a drum set. Working on that piece has given me a new confidence that the various, seemingly disparate and incongruous facets of my musical language can coexist in a way I couldn’t have imagined possible earlier in my life.

Because of my responsibilities teaching at Manhattan School of Music I haven’t had the luxury of  returning to the Keats setting for any sustained length of time since last summer, but the upcoming Rockquiem concerts by C4 have afforded me a chance to continue exploring this side of my creative personality on a more modest scale. Though I have been using certain “stealth” jazz and rock elements in my music for the past decade, these concerts will mark the first public performances of a piece of mine using actual rock instrumentation. C4 has put together a program that includes a newly composed collaborative setting of a traditional Roman Catholic Requiem Mass in Latin, with different composers from within C4 contributing movements from that liturgy. Though I began singing with C4 in 2010, the last time I performed with them was two years ago, when we did another piece of mine (O Oriens/Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern). It will be  a pleasure to be in the audience for this premiere. Please join me if you are able!

My contribution to Rockquiem is the Offertorium (Domine Jesu Christe), which uses not only the rock trio but an electronic wind instrument that acts as a surrogate for an alto sax. It features a mostly gentle, laid-back groove (with occasional outbursts), and ends with a quiet, meditative, quasi-minimalist postlude whose texture gradually dissipates.

Bryan Lin is the excellent conductor, and the excellent instrumentalists are:

Oren Fader, electric guitar; Billy Stark, electric bass; Will Hopkins, drums; and Evan Fontaine, electronic wind instrument.

Text and Translation:

Domine Iesu Christe, Rex gloriæ,
libera animas omnium fidelium defunctorum
de pœnis inferni et de profundo lacu:
libera eas de ore leonis,
ne absorbeat eas tartarus,
ne cadant in obscurum.

(O Lord Jesus Christ, King of glory,
deliver the souls of all the faithful departed
from the pains of hell and from the bottomless pit:
deliver them from the lion’s mouth,
that hell swallow them not up,
that they fall not into darkness.)

Hostias et preces, tibi, Domine, laudis offerimus:
tu suscipe pro animabus illis,
quarum hodie memoriam facimus:
fac eas, Domine, de morte transire ad vitam,
quam olim Abrahæ promisisti et semini ejus.

(We offer unto Thee praise with sacrifices and prayers.
Do Thou accept them for those souls
whose memory we keep today.
Grant them, O Lord, to pass from death to the life
that Thou hast promised once to Abraham and his seed.)

If you’re in the vicinity, are available, and can get to Shapeshifter in Brooklyn (837 Union Street) on Thursday, May 29 or Friday, May 30, I’d be delighted to see you there. Both performances start at 8:00 PM. Tickets are available at www.c4ensemble.org.

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