Voices of Ascension: Canticle of the Sun
Voices of Ascension: Canticle of the Sun
Voices of Ascension, Beth Willer, conductor
Church of the Ascension
May 21, 2026
Published in Sequenza 21
By Christian Carey
NEW YORK – Beth Willer, Director of Choral Activities at Peabody Conservatory and Artistic Director of Lorelei Ensemble, served as guest conductor for Voices of Ascension’s recent Canticle of the Sun concert. To say the program was ambitious is to undersell the challenges posed by all of the pieces. Most choral ensembles, even professional ensembles, would consider any one of these works to be an inclusion sufficient to prove their capabilities as interpreters of recent music, and move on to the rest of the evening. Voices of Ascension and Willer had other ideas.
Ellen Reid’s Oscillations: 100 Years and Forever, for chorus and percussion, opened the program. Percussionists Clara Warnaar and Colleen Bernstein were called upon to inhabit a number of roles – no pun intended. During the course of the piece, thrumming drumming and dulcet textures from pitched percussion supported singing from the chorus and four soloists that moved similarly through a wide dynamic range. The piece’s text deals with the cycles of nature operating over the course of a century in Los Angeles, and the varieties of repetition suggested by the title appeared in asymmetric waves of activity.
All My Salt Runs Short, settings of three texts by the New Zealand poet Chris Holdoway and twentieth century Venezuelan writer Miguel Otero Silva by composer Celeste Oram, was given its premiere by Ascension, joined by organist Paolo Bordignon. The piece takes its title from a phrase in the poem by Silva, and the juxtaposition of salt found in oceans and tears was a moving throughline in the work. The relationship between chorus and organ was interesting, and showed the trust the composer had in the singers, as long stretches of a cappella singing were followed by passages that then synced up with the organ. These were rendered with impressive tuning, with fetching added note and chromatic harmonies creating a shimmering texture. Like Oscillations, groups of soloists and different divisi afforded the possibilities of multiple strands of activity, and the aforementioned chordal events were matched by supple, interweaving lines. As with the other programmed pieces, All My Salt Runs Short features percussion, here instruments of an atmospheric variety, a rain stick, wind wand, and whirly tube. As the work neared its conclusion, the organ was turned off with a cluster chord still depressed, causing it to dip down and fade away, leaving the choir to conclude with a held, haunting echo. Willer brought out numerous subtleties in this quite detailed score, eliciting an affecting performance.
Olivier Messiaen didn’t write much choral music, but Clytus Gottwald’s arrangement of Louange á L’Éternité de Jésus, a movement from Le Quatuor pour la fins du Temps, using a text by the composer, worked well. Organist John Gillock gave a rafter shaking rendition of Messiaen’s Apparition de l’église éternelle that demonstrated the plenitude of colorful registrations that Ascension’s pipe organ affords.
The title piece of the concert, for the unusual scoring of solo cello, percussion, and chorus, was Sofia Gubaidulina’s Canticle of the Sun (1997). An animated performance that in places took on a ritualistic demeanor, it was given a powerful rendition. Solo cellist Tommy Mesa was required to play abundantly virtuosic passages, including finely tuned, wide ranging glissandos, which were impressively rendered. About midway through, another set of challenges for Mesa presented themselves. Scordatura, retuning of strings to different pitches, occurred on the fly, and eventually his cello was left behind altogether in favor of percussion instruments, which culminated in Mesa on a suspended cymbal, in clangorous crashes, in the middle of the hall. After this climax, gradually equilibrium was restored, Mesa returning to the stage, and his instrument, playing the key glissando gestures of the piece to close. Throughout, the choir alternated between accompanying and engaging in dialogue with the soloist and the percussionist cohort.
There was much to admire about Voices of Ascension’s performance. They are in excellent hands with their director, Dennis Keene, but Willer’s conducting and curation make one hope she will join them again to make similarly inspired music.