News Release: PEV PRESENTS VAUGHAN WILLIAMS’ SELDOM-PERFORMED DONA NOBIS PACEM IN PROGRAM CALLED ‘SON TO MOTHER’ APRIL 1, 2023, IN OAKLAND

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 Single Performance Features Bass-Baritone Wilford Kelly and Orchestra

 BERKELEY, Calif. (March 7, 2023) – The Grammy-nominated Pacific Edge Voices (PEV) presents a spring program entitled “Son to Mother” that features the rarely performed cantata Dona Nobis Pacem by Ralph Vaughan Williams. PEV music director Ash Walker conducts, with soloist bass-baritone Wilford Kelly and orchestra. The only performance is Saturday, April 1, at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland. (Full program listed below.)

British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams composed Dona Nobis Pacem, in 1936, in response to the anguish of his experiences during the First World War and to seeing Europe headed toward further conflict. The work, which combines text from the traditional Latin requiem mass with biblical verses and the pacifist poetry of Walt Whitman, is a call for peace.

Bass-baritone Wilford Kelly

 PEV’s “Son to Mother” choral program explores this idea of searching for peace through both personal and communal loss. It draws inspiration from the poems “Son to Mother” (1991) by Maya Angelou and “Mother to Son” (1922) by Langston Hughes. Other works include a setting of Angelou’s poem by Swedish composer Henrik Dahlgren, “All of Us” from Craig Hella Johnson’s oratorio Considering Matthew Shepard and John Lennon’s “Because.”

 “This program is both highly personal for me and touches on universal issues,” says PEV Music Director Ash Walker. “We live in complicated times, especially here in the Bay Area. Every day, we encounter exceptional beauty and tremendous loss and pain. My vision for this concert is to explore that dual reality through the rich musical and textual complexities of the Vaughan Williams, the haunting words of Maya Angelou and these other works.  We want to provide an opportunity for all of us to come together for support, catharsis and, ultimately, to discover peace and strength in community.”

 Full program

Ralph Vaughan Williams: Dona Nobis Pacem

Craig Hella Johnson: “All of Us” from Considering Matthew Shepard

John Lennon: Because

Henrik Dahlgren: Son to Mother

Jake Runestad: A Silence Haunts Me

 Tickets are $25 general admission, $15 for students, available online or by phone at (415) 392-4400.

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