The Sangre de Cristo Chorale, now in its 46th season, will use its concert in Santa Fe this Saturday to explore suffering and hope through music. Their new director brings new ideas to one of the longest performing chorales in New Mexico.
For 46 years, the Sangre de Cristo chorale has provided a space for singers from their 20s well into their 70s.
Members of the audition-only choir hail from Santa Fe to Los Alamos and have long performed classic and contemporary pieces, as well as sacred and Southwestern regional music.
Dr. George Case, the chorale’s newest director, has introduced work that expresses varying themes of hope, loss, and comfort – music that he says the world needs to hear right now.
“I think one of the roles that music and theater and the arts occupy in our world is a chance to kind of reflect what's happening in the world, reflect human nature, back on audiences, back on performers, back on society itself,” said Case.
At the center of this concert is a piece titled The Opposites Game written by Dale Trumbore. It’s based on a poem by a teacher whose students were assigned to analyze the Emily Dickenson work “My Life had stood….a Loaded Gun.”
"The poem takes that one line and asks a classroom of elementary school students to respond, what is the opposite of a gun?” said Case.
The performance then explores the journey these kids went on trying to answer this question through confrontation, debate, and resolution.
The title of this year’s performance is Pilgrimage of Hope. It is a program filled with peace and redemption as Case explained, surrounding the Trumbor piece and eight others alongside it.
The Chorale’s performance of Pilgrimage of Hope is Saturday, March 9 at 4 p.m. at St. Bede’s Episcopal Church in Santa Fe.
Tickets cost $25 for adults and students under 18 are free, they can be found here.
