Horo Hata Music Performance Review

The performance I attended was at the Bienen School of Music, Northwestern University. This concert was a preview of BCE’s performance this upcoming Thursday at the American Choral Directors Association Central Division Conference. The works of Ratniece and Hearne will be performed at the conference. The program we started with was Horo Horo Hata Hata by Santa Ratniece, followed by a few other pieces. This was my first time at the Ryan Center for the Musical Arts, it was a very interesting experience. The building was vast, and was located right in front of lake Michigan. The auditorium where I sat felt small but it was actually quite massive with two viewpoints; the balcony view and ground floor view. The conductor, Donald Nally, actually …show more content…
While the foreground of her music is often a dense and evolving texture of sounds heard in nature, hints of functional harmony move slowly underneath, emerging and disappearing again into the haze. The conductor stated that the music tugs at our memories drawing us into the gravity of the work. Her themes are often those of the natural world. The graphic depictions of its colors magnify the distance that our human-centric culture is separated from that of the world which we are charged to curate. Horo Horo Hata Hata begins like a lullaby. These words are the refrain to an ainu lullaby, and the ainu people find these unusual, wonderful sounds as holy as the ringing of the heavenly bulls. it seems as if the finely vibrating field of sound will put us to sleep, but it actually leads us to the heart of the ainu hunters’ prayers to a bird and a deer. Though hunting is part of the ainu peoples everyday like, they care deeply about the souls of hundred creatures and worship the gods who appear in the masks of birds and beasts. The prayer to the bird begins with quiet owl whistles - wishing it an easy flight up to the highest heavens. The prayer to the hunted deer ends with the deer’s calls, when the flight of its soul has already reached the highest mountain …show more content…
Ted Hearne was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, where he was a member of the Chicago Children's Choir. Ted Hearne is a composer, singer and bandleader who draws on a wide breadth of influences ranging across music's full terrain, to create intense, personal and multi-dimensional works. Early in his life, Ted Hearne moved to New York in 2000 and has attended the Manhattan School of Music and Yale School of Music. Hearne's oratorio “Katrina Ballads”, an hour-long piece about the media’s response to Hurricane Katrina received widespread acclaim after it was premiered at Charleston's Spoleto Festival in 2007. Ted Hearne oratorio “The Source”, about Chelsea Manning, sets text from leaked military documents and was premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The Los Angeles Philharmonic, The San Francisco Symphony, A Far Cry, Pianist Timo Andres, singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane and other musicians, has commissioned Ted Hearne. Ted Hearne has become known for writing in a wide range of contemporary-music styles, and has collaborated with a diverse group of musicians, most notably Erykah Badu, with whom he created an evening-length piece for Badu to perform with the Brooklyn Philharmonic. Also, Ted Hearne collaborated with electronic/noise musician Philip White, with whom he performs as R We Who R We. Additionally, Ted Hearne worked with J.G. Thirlwell, with whom he created chamber-music arrangements of