Candler Concert Series
Single Ticket Price: $55
Build-Your-Own Package Price: $41.25 available here!
The Atlanta premiere of A Standing Witness opens the 20th anniversary season of Emory University’s Schwartz Center for Performing Arts. This Candler Concert Series performance is a monumental collaboration between Grammy Award–winning composer Richard Danielpour and Pulitzer Prize–winning author and former US Poet Laureate Rita Dove. The soaring music and probing poetry of this epic song cycle trace enormous social and cultural change in the United States.
Written especially for Susan Graham and the celebrated Music from Copland House ensemble, the 14 songs and one instrumental elegy of A Standing Witness comprise a sweeping retrospective of momentous events in American history over the past half-century, recounted in “testimonies” by an observer who is revealed in the epilogue. With lyrics from Rita Dove’s latest book of poetry, Playlist for the Apocalypse, the work begins in 1968, reflecting on events including the Kennedy and King assassinations, Woodstock, the Vietnam War, Nixon presidency, civil and women’s rights movements, economic boom times of the 1990s, the attacks on 9/11, and the whirlwinds of the last decade.
The 70–minute program will be followed by an audience discussion with select artists.