About the Program

Shared Breath, Shared Song

December 7, 13 & 14, 2025

“...be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.”
— Ephesians 5:18–19

The act of singing together—breathing together—is one of humanity’s oldest and most sacred gestures. Long before there were written scriptures or cathedrals, before printed scores or recordings, there was the human voice rising in sound: sometimes a cry for help, sometimes a shout of praise, sometimes a quiet murmur of thanks. “Shared Breath, Shared Song” invites us to listen across time, language, and belief to the universal human impulse to reach toward something greater than ourselves—to seek the Divine, however we understand that word.

This program is not a study in comparative religion. It is, rather, a meditation on what happens when human beings sing from a place of reverence. The sacred takes many forms: invocation, devotion, wonder, peace, gratitude. The music in this program emerges from diverse traditions— Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, and beyond—but all share a common origin: the desire to name the unnameable, to give breath and sound to awe.

Invocation

We begin with Zikr, A. R. Rahman’s ecstatic Sufi meditation arranged for choir by Ethan Sperry. In the Islamic mystical tradition, zikr (Arabic for “remembrance”) refers to the repeated invocation of God’s name—a practice meant to quiet the self and awaken divine presence within. Rahman’s composition, pulsing with rhythmic energy and layered choral textures, transforms that spiritual discipline into sound. The choir becomes a collective voice of longing and release, repeating the central affirmation that God’s light is found in every soul, every flower, every breath. Here, remembrance becomes music, and music becomes prayer.

Songs of Love and Devotion

Love of God, of neighbor, of creation is the heartbeat of sacred song. Maurice Duruflé’s Ubi caritas opens this section with quiet radiance. Drawn from an ancient Gregorian chant, its text declares, “Where charity and love are, God is there.” Duruflé’s harmonies flow like candlelight: warm, transparent, and timeless. The piece asks nothing more than that we love one another with sincere hearts.

Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Bogoroditse Devo (“Rejoice, O Virgin”) from the All-Night Vigil offers a contrasting expression of devotion. Rooted in the Eastern Orthodox liturgical tradition, it is at once intimate and monumental. The text, drawn from the Orthodox prayer to the Virgin Mary, rises from hushed reverence to brilliant exultation. For Rachmaninoff, faith was inseparable from beauty, and his choral writing here suggests that beauty itself can be a form of prayer.

Songs Extolling the Wonders of the Universe and Nature

Many faith traditions locate the sacred not in grandiose temples but in the natural world—in wind and water, in mountains and stars. The works in this section celebrate that cosmic reverence. Ethan Sperry’s Jai Bhavani, based on a Sanskrit invocation, honors the Hindu goddess Durga as the embodiment of Mother Earth and divine strength. The refrain “Victory to Bhavani!” is not a triumphal cry but a joyful surrender to the creative power that sustains life. The driving rhythms and open harmonies echo both the spiritual exuberance and the deep serenity of Hindu devotional music.

From Alexandria, Egypt, comes Mohamed Abdelfattah’s Ai’yu, a contemporary piece born of the Arabic exclamation of wonder. Though secular in origin, its spirit is unmistakably sacred—an outpouring of awe at existence itself. The composer weaves the melismatic contours of traditional Egyptian song into a lush choral tapestry that blurs the line between devotion and delight. John Rutter’s beloved For the Beauty of the Earth brings us home to a familiar hymn of gratitude. Rutter’s setting, with its graceful melodies and luminous harmonies, transforms the Victorian text into a modern anthem of ecological and spiritual awareness. Each verse builds on the previous—beauty of earth, of hour, of love, of gift—until the whole becomes a single offering of praise.

Peace, Centeredness, Connection

If the first half of the concert explores reaching upward and outward, this section turns inward—to the still point where breath, body, and spirit meet.

Meditation on a Poem by Sangharakshita, composed by Manidhara, distills Buddhist practice into choral sound. The text traces a path from turmoil to tranquility, from striving to surrender. Manidhara’s setting invites us into the quiet that underlies all motion, the silence from which music is born.

From the Jewish liturgical tradition comes Shalom Rav by Meir Finkelstein, a contemporary cantorial masterpiece that prays, “Grant abundant peace unto Israel, your people, forever.” In Finkelstein’s setting, the solo voice rises from within the choir like a plea from the collective soul. The word shalom—so often translated as “peace”—also means wholeness, completeness, harmony. This prayer speaks not only for one people, but for all who yearn for concord and compassion in a fractured world.

Howard Goodall’s The Lord Is My Shepherd, familiar to many through the BBC series The Vicar of Dibley, reframes Psalm 23 in tender simplicity. A soaring treble line and warm cello countermelody underscore the psalmist’s trust: “Your goodness will lead me home.” The effect is deeply personal, a prayer whispered rather than proclaimed.

Benediction

Mack Wilberg’s Jubilate Deo concludes the first half with radiant joy. Its text—“O be joyful in the Lord, all ye lands”—is a universal call to praise. With driving rhythms and jubilant harmonies, Wilberg’s music invites not solemnity but celebration, a final collective breath of gratitude.

Misa Criolla

The second half of our program is devoted to Ariel Ramírez’s Misa Criolla, a groundbreaking 1964 work that weds the structure of the Roman Catholic Mass with the rhythms and instruments of indigenous South American “creole” folk traditions. Each movement draws from a distinct regional dance form: the vidala-baguala, carnavalito, chacarera trunca, carnaval cochabambino, and estilo pampeano. Sung in Spanish, Misa Criolla embodies the joyful fusion of faith and culture—a testament to how sacred music evolves when belief meets local expression. Ramírez dedicated the work to the “humble people of Latin America,” whose faith was lived as song, whose daily labor was itself a prayer.

Final Reflection

“Shared Breath, Shared Song” is not about religion as doctrine; it is about reverence, awe, and the ways music becomes our shared vocabulary for the Divine. When we sing sacred music, regardless of its faith tradition, we breathe the same air and embody the same longing. That shared breath becomes shared spirit—a meeting place for the human and the holy. To sing sacred music from many traditions is not to flatten their differences but to honor their depth—to listen across boundaries and find, in the resonance of the human voice, a common longing. In every language, in every tradition, sacred song begins with a breath. Tonight, we share that breath, that song, and the quiet hope that all our searching might lead us toward one another.

—Jason Iannuzzi, Artistic Director