We call our 2021 project “Carols after a Plague” because of the ambiguity of those words. 

After? (we had hoped)
A? (just one?)

Plague. 
Which plague? Our pandemic? 
Or the ongoing plagues we endure: racism, poverty, displacement, environmental deterioration, gun violence, homelessness...

Carol. How?
To many, a familiar song, communal, outside, seasonal. 
To others, strange words celebrating what appear to be unlikely persons and events. 
Season, song, company. Carol.

We asked twelve composers – twelve, the divisions of the hour, of the year, of the days of Christmas – to respond to our project title, leaving it to them to address what “Carols after a Plague” meant to them: an exercise in perspective, in experience, in histories that are widely and at times wildly different.