Inset, top left: Composer Courtney Bryan (photo by Donavon Smallwood). Larger photo: Edwin Outwater conducts the Quince Ensemble and members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Bryan’s Requiem, now streaming (photo by Todd Rosenberg).
“Like many premieres originally planned for the past year, Courtney Bryan’s Requiem, written for the vocal quartet Quince Ensemble and members of the Chicago Symphony, was stranded in limbo” during the pandemic, writes Joshua Barone in Thursday’s (6/24) New York Times. “But through the orchestra’s turn to online programming … the piece was given a new date this week, when the latest episode of CSO Sessions lands on the streaming platform CSOtv…. Maybe it’s actually more fitting that the Requiem be released now…. ‘I think about the loss in my own life, but I know that a lot of people have had a lot of losses during this time, due to Covid and other situations,’ Bryan said in a recent interview. ‘So I’m really happy that this is the actual premiere.’ … Her Requiem … draws from a broad range of inspirations, including death rituals from the Anglican Church, ‘The Tibetan Book of the Dead,’ Neoshamanism’s death rite known as the ‘great death spiral’ and New Orleans jazz funerals, as well as text from the Bible and the traditional Catholic Mass.” In an interview, Bryan speaks about her upbringing, musical influences, and composing in “a profound time of loss.”
