Evento

The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace

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Music by Sir Karl Jenkins

March 16, 2019 Performance at 8:00pm
Bellevue Presbyterian Church, Bellevue

Also performed on March 23, 2019 at 8:00pm
First Free Methodist Church, Seattle

Performed by the Seattle Choral Company
(Freddie Coleman, Conductor & Artistic Director)
and Brass Band Northwest (Judson Scott, Artistic Director)
with Sarah Mattox, Mezzo-Soprano Soloist

Landing at No. 1 of a 2008 top-10 list of works by living composers in the United Kingdom was The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace by Sir Karl Jenkins. Commissioned for the new millennium and premiered in 2000, The Armed Man uses the medieval French song LHomme Armé (The Armed Man) which was the basis of innumerable 15th- and 16th-century Mass settings.

It is an immediately accessible work full of memorable, neo-Romantic melodies, but theres more to it than that.

The Welsh Jenkins sets texts from a variety of cultures and times to express the universality of the message that war is destructive and that peace is desirable. Psalms, the Revelation, the Muslim Call to Prayers, a poem by a Japanese witness to the Hiroshima bombing, the Indian epic The Mahabharata, and English poetry all play a part. The texts form a cohesive narrativeof prayer, preparation for war, battle, death, destruction, and mourningthat evolves into a declaration of peace and an affirmation that sorrow, pain, and death will be overcome. A few sections of the traditional Catholic Mass are skillfully interwoven into the sensitive musical setting.

The success of The Armed Man lies in Jenkinss ability to underscore the vivid and often poignant texts through effective use of uncluttered vocal lines and clear harmony.

The concert begins at 8:00 p.m.
Pre-concert talk hosted by conductor Freddie Coleman at 7:00 p.m.