The Music of Living: The Music of Dan Forrest

Tickets: Adults $25 in advance/$35 at the door · Students $20 in advance or at the door · Children 13 and under free

Dan Forrest’s Requiem for the Living keeps the traditional architecture of the Mass for the dead—Introit and Kyrie, Vanitas Vanitatum, Agnus Dei, Sanctus, and Lux Aeterna—but quietly redirects it. The rest it asks for is rest for the living: for the exhausted, the grieving, and those still carrying something they haven’t put down. It moves through genuine turbulence before it earns its light, and when the light comes, you believe it.

The Music of Living opens the afternoon in plain gratitude. i thank You God for this most amazing day sets e.e. cummings’s celebration of eyes and ears and being awake to the world. Entreat Me Not to Leave You takes the vow Ruth makes in the Hebrew Bible, one of the most complete promises anyone has ever made: whither thou goest, I will go.

Good Night, Dear Heart uses the lines Mark Twain had inscribed on the gravestone of his daughter Susy after she died at twenty-four: “Warm summer sun, shine kindly here. Good night, dear heart, good night, good night.” The piece lasts about three minutes. Its effect lasts much longer.

If you were with us in December, you have already heard Forrest—his Angels We Have Heard on High opened our Christmas program. This afternoon offers the full measure of his music.

Come and let it work on you.