In A House Besieged

w/ Scott Dettra, organ

Stacy Garrop, In a House Besieged (world premiere)
Lansing McLoskey, The Memory of Rain (from The Month of Moderns 2010)
Arvo Pärt, Salve Regina

Saturday, March 26, 2022
@ 3pm
Shadyside Presbyterian Church, Pittsburgh

Now we have moved into the upper rooms of the house
and stand at the window watching the fish flash
through the branches of our peach tree.
An eel looks out from below our wheelbarrow.

In a House Besieged fuses writings of Lydia Davis into an extraordinarily unique libretto reflecting the fear and anxiety around the aging process. We see our homes and the world around us crumble and decay with time; can we admit that our bodies and minds will do the same? Through her mastery of choral textures, Stacy ponders: is our topic a crumbling society, cognitive collapse, moral deprivation, or the devastating disintegration of our environment? With Arvo Pärt’s introspective Salve Regina and Lansing’s provocative, gloriously mystifying The Memory of Rain, on poems of Philip Levine capturing Francisco Franco’s devastated Spain of the 1950s: jet fighters, tranquilizers, TVs.

Stacy Garrop’s In a House Besieged is commissioned by the Cleveland Museum of Art - Tom Welsh, Director of Performing Arts, Music and Film