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Chanticleer Premieres Kamran Ince's Everywhere at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York

Apr. 05, 2007

The Bay Area-based choral ensemble Chanticleer premieres a mass of its own commissioning on April 26 when at the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York it performs And On Earth, Peace: A Chanticleer Mass. The mass is comprised of original compositions from five composers, each piece constituting a single movement in the mass. In addition to Kamran Ince, the other composers involved are Douglas J. Cuomo, Ivan Moody, Michael McGlynn and Shulamit Ran. According to the terms of the commissioning, the works concerned, while a mass, have no particular religious, text or language requirements.

On his piece Everywhere, which serves as the Gloria movement in the mass, Kamran Ince comments:

“With all the composers being of varying ethnic backgrounds, it is a unique project, one that is so needed these days to break down the cultural, religious and ethnic barriers. I was drawn to the 13th century Sufi poet Jelaleddin Rumi (known as Mevlana in Turkey). Perhaps one of the greatest mystic poets, he also founded the Order of Dervishes (“Whirling Dervishes”). 2007 is UNESCO International Year of Rumi, in celebration of the 800th anniversary of his birth.
“The Sufis believe that the goal of man is to emancipate oneself from human thoughts and wishes, needs and senses, so one becomes a part of, a mirror of, god. Through the whirling that can go on for hours, the dervishes are able to achieve emancipation. Rumi's poetry is about the pure love for, and the glory of god, seeking and finding god in everything we encounter, and the desire and yearning for becoming one with the Diety.
“In setting the poem I used of Rumi, Everywhere, I tried to convey the strong yearning for god with searching lines, at times incomplete, breathless. The glorification and the ecstatic anticipation of unification is portrayed with more direct textures. Of course I am thinking about what Rumi's world means to me in sounds, within my musical language. This surely includes Ottoman, Turkish, as well as Western music.
“For me, the following four lines from Everywhere well represents the spirit of this Mass:
Moslems and Christians and Jews
raising their hands to the sky
their chanting voice in unison
begins to arrive”

 

Additionally, this month Kamran Ince’s chamber ensemble work Flight Box can be heard at the Smith Recital Hall on the Marshall University Campus in Huntington, West Virginia on April 23.

Kamran Ince
Everywhere from And On Earth, Peace: A Chanticleer Mass (2007)
SATB Chorus
Duration: 12’

Kamran Ince
Flight Box (2001)
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Duration: 13’

For more information on Kamran Ince, please visit www.schott-music.com.

For further details on the Chanticleer performance of And On Earth, Peace: A Chanticleer Mass, please visit www.chanticleer.org.

For further details on Marshall University and its performance of Flight Box, please click here.

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