Program Notes

“The struggle continues. Aluta continua!”

Welcome to the season finale of David Hodgkins’ 25 th year as Artistic Director of Coro Allegro. Throughout the season we have celebrated this occasion with compelling premieres by American composers that bear witness to international human rights, and with psalm settings that remind us of music’s power to bring consolation and peace.

This afternoon we reprise Aluta continua: The passion of David Kato Kisule by Eric Banks. Coro Allegro premiered Banks tribute to the slain Ugandan LGBTI activist in 2016. Commissioned by a member of the chorus, it inspired our community to hold a fundraiser for Spectrum Uganda and Refuge Point’s work on behalf of LGBTQ+ refugees awaiting asylum in East Africa. The same summer we performed it again for the over 6,000 LGBTQ+ and allied singers gathered for the international GALA Choruses Festival in Denver. Later this month, Coro Allegro will record it for an album titled We Are Here, that will also feature Rage Against the tyrant(s) by Syrian American composer Kareem Roustom.

In the second half, we proudly premiere Psalms of Luminous Rescue by Patricia Van Ness, the 8th Annual Daniel Pinkham Award winner and former Composer-in-Residence for Coro Allegro. Like Bobby McFerrin’s setting of Psalm 23 with which we opened the season, Van Ness’s work honors the memory of our foremothers. Like Shawn Kirchner’s Songs of Ascent, a version of which Coro Allegro premiered in March, Psalms of Luminous Rescue seeks to heal and uplift through the power of song.

Artistic Director David Hodgkins: “As musicians and artists, we can no longer be quiet about what is happening in contemporary society. One way we can contribute is to write and commission and sing about what is happening. Both the composers featured in the concert talk about changes in how they compose and how they feel about their art. Music has become for them a vehicle to inform, to bear witness to history and to affirm our common humanity.”

In very different ways, both Eric Banks and Patricia Van Ness are each taking a stand through their music for LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people around the world. Coro Allegro is glad you are here with us as we raise our voices together for our shared human rights.

“If we keep on hiding, they will say we are not here... but of late, we are here.”
– David Kato Kisule