Current Projects

George ArasimowiczARASIMOWICZ COMMISSION - Following the success in 2000 of George Arasimowicz’ Window Rock: Peter’s Dawn, Soli Deo Gloria has returned to the brilliant composer with a second commission, this time for a companion tone poem focusing on the life of the Apostle Paul, titled Glimmers in the Dark Glass. George Arasimowicz has received fellowships, awards, and commissions from numerous organizations including The National Endowment for the Arts, National Public Radio, Guggenheim, Fromm, and ArtsLink/Soros foundations, Canada Council, Alberta, California, Colorado, Illinois and Ontario Arts Councils.The details of the world premiere of Dr. Arasimowicz’ new tone poem are currently under discussion.

BANCKS COMMISSION - Soli Deo Gloria has commissioned award-winning composer Jacob Bancks to write a six movement mass for choir, soloists and chamber orchestra titled Mass for All the Saints.

Fra Angelico’s 'All Saints'

Meditative, celebratory, reverent and joyous - Bancks’ new work is inspired by images of all the saints gathered in heaven. “…and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne…” Religious art depicting this description of “the great multitude” from the Book of Revelation stirs the composer’s thoughts as he completes the new work.Jacob Bancks comments on the inspiration behind Mass for All the Saints:

Jacob Bancks - photo: Artistic depictions of the saints intrigue me to no end. In my work as a church musician in the Archdiocese of Chicago, I’ve had the opportunity to see scads of religious art, good and bad, at dozens of parishes. While statues, paintings, and stained glass windows of individual saints can be interesting in themselves, I personally find any representation of a host of saints — all the saints — overwhelmingly fascinating. Rather than replicating their earthly lives (like the ubiquitous statues of St. Francis of Assisi, animals in tow), depictions of all the saints show them gathered in the afterlife, a motley crowd of extremely diverse, extremely imperfect people from every era, nation and race.”

The premiere performance of Mass for All the Saints will take place on Sunday, September 20, 2009, at 7:00 p.m., at St. John Berchmans Church in Chicago. Conductor and Artistic Director Robert Katkov-Trevino will lead the Millennium Chamber Players in a program that will also include Mozart’s Requiem.

Award-winning composer Jacob Bancks, whose upcoming premieres include performances with the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, mezzo-soprano Julia Bentley and eighth blackbird, holds the positions of 2008-09 composer-in-residence for the Millennium Chamber Players and Director of Music at St. John Berchmans Church in Chicago. Bancks’ SDG-commissioned piano concerto Lumen de Lumine received its premiere by the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra in March 2008. Click here for photos, videos and reports on Lumen de Lumine.

Burnand: Peter and John running to the tombBANNISTER COMMISSION - A new oratorio for chorus, orchestra and soloists, with a dual focus on the incarnation of Christ and his second coming, has been created by composer Peter Bannister. The New Testament writings of Luke feature prominently in the work’s libretto. The title of the piece, Et iterum venturus est, comes from the Nicene Creed and is translated “And He Shall Come Again”. The work is written in homage to the great French composer/organist Olivier Messiaen, and was premiered by the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris during the 100th anniversary year (2008) of Messiaen’s birth. Click here for information on the commissioning and premiere of Et iterum venturus est and to read the composer’s thoughts on the oratorio’s Biblical themes.

Born in London, the composer, pianist and organist Peter Bannister studied music at King’s College Cambridge and then as a French Government scholar in Paris with Genevieve Ibanez, Michel Beroff and Naji Hakim. He has been the recipient of awards including prizes at the Chartres and Nuremberg International Organ Competitions as well as the André Caplet composition prize of the Institut de France. His work as a composer has included commissions and performances in Europe (Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Rencontres Musicales de La Prée, London Purcell Room, Bourges and Chartres Cathedrals, Klangbogen Wien …) and North America. As a recitalist he has performed at numerous international festivals, giving lectures and masterclasses in France, Sweden, Croatia and the USA. As an opera coach he has collaborated with the Opera National de Paris, Chatelet Theatre and Aix-en-Provence Festival, working with conductors such as Sir Simon Rattle, James Conlon and Gennadi Rozhdestvensky.

Rembrandt: The Return of the Prodigal SonHARNLY COMMISSION - Soli Deo Gloria is commissioning composer Neal Harnly to create a new work for children’s chorus and chamber orchestra. The work’s SDG-commissioned libretto, created by poet Alisa Bair, is titled The Prodigal Son, and it reflects on the gospel parable from the perspective of various characters involved.

A native of Manheim, PA, Neal S. Harnly, M.D., composer, pianist and physician is a graduate of the Juilliard School in New York City where he studied composition with the late Vincent Persichetti. After teaching ear-training and theory as a fellow at Juilliard, he felt a calling into the medical field. Despite a busy medical practice and very limited time, Harnly continues to work as a serious composer and an accomplished pianist. His instrumental and vocal works have been performed on the East and West coasts of the United States as well as in France and Norway. When not at the office or at home composing music, he continues to actively perform as pianist and accompanist, arranging and orchestrating, and using his musical gifts to further the worship ministry of Mount Joy Mennonite Church. He also serves on the board of the Lancaster Conservatory of Music.

Teatro Nacional - San Jose, Costa RicaPROJECT UPLIFT: COSTA RICA 2009 - On June 12 and 14, 2009, conductor John Nelson will lead Costa Rica’s National Symphony Orchestra and National Symphony Choir in that country’s first ever performance of J.S. Bach’s Mass in B Minor. Click here for a video report on Soli Deo Gloria’s first collaboration with the National Symphony Orchestra, featuring Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 and Verdi’s Four Sacred Pieces.

PROJECTS UNDER CONSTRUCTION:
The following projects are in the early stages of development.
We look forward to bringing them to completion in the days ahead,
with the generous help of our supporters.

“Noah” Project - We are collaborating with a Pulitzer-prize winning composer and a renowned author on this new work to be based on the figure of Noah. In this project, we see opportunity for broad impact on the global community. Discussions on themes for the work have included warning of the need for repentance, encouragement toward alternatives to violence and corruption, a call to respond to wide-spread devastation in the world and the reality of hope and promise.


Psalms Project - In their capacity to articulate the profundity of human spiritual experience, surely few bodies of texts in world literature can equal the Hebrew Psalter. Here we have a distillation of humanity’s dealings with the divine which has never ceased to inspire believers across the centuries. Indeed, it might be said that the Psalms constitute a Biblical template for sung and spoken prayer, both individual and communal, which has shaped the entire Judeo-Christian tradition and had an incalculable impact on Western culture and beyond.Psalm 23 - photo:OreoReoEoO - flkr
The poetry of the Psalms clearly transcends barriers of time and space, inspiring the greatest variety of music from the visceral intensity of Jewish cantillation to the imposingly rugged metrical settings of 16th century Geneva, from Allegri to Bernstein, Gregorian chant to Steve Reich, Bach or Schubert to Stravinsky, Schnittke or Mahalia Jackson. So, given the quantity and quality of this musical corpus of psalmody, why solicit a new collection of settings? Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that each succeeding generation has found its own concerns mirrored in and interpreted by these texts on a deep level. If these pages contain treasured statements about the nature of God, they also display the full gamut of human feeling from the exultation of the ‘Old Hundredth’ to the penitent brokenness of the Miserere or the anguished cry of the De Profundis. No psychological state is too raw, no emotion too painful to be left untouched by the Psalms’ embrace; these are words with universal relevance that seem to evoke, even demand a creative artistic response that cannot avoid being made in the first person.

While it is undoubtedly true that the Psalms speak to all, irrespective of issues of taste or levels of musical education, it is surely also true that their inexhaustible richness deserves the engagement of the most talented contemporary musical creators. We are therefore challenging several of the leading composers of our time to allow their imaginations to be fired by the Psalms’ symbolic density and psychological depth. We do so in the hope that they will make their own unique personal contribution to a tradition which is both ancient and ever-new. It is our belief that in so doing they will enrich the lives not only of worshiping communities, performers and concert audiences, but also of all those, whatever their religious convictions, for whom the Psalter is a timeless source of inspiration and strength.

Click here to download a print-ready version of this project summary (Psalms Project).

DVD Recordings - Discussions are underway to sponsor new DVD productions of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, Haydn’s The Creation and Bach’s St. Matthew Passion.