Sunday, August 20 | 7 PM | Tent at Camden Public Library Amphitheatre

Age 35 +: $38 | Age 22-34: $20 | Age 21 & Under: Pay What You Wish

NICHOLAS PHAN, tenor

JESSE BLUMBERG, baritone

GABRIEL KAHANE, singer songwriter

KENYATTA EMMANUEL, singer songwriter

JAMES AUSTIN SMITH, oboe

JOHN MCKEAN, harpsichord

PALAVER STRINGS

The culmination of a week of music-making, conversation, and collective hope and optimism, our closing gala features performances by artists performing at Screen Door 2023, led by spectacular international vocal talents.

Hope can thrive in so many places within our hearts and minds, in our love for other people as in Gabriel Kahane’s enchanting and wistful song in which two people describe a favorite seaside spot and sing, “I hope we die here when we’re old”. Bach’s cantata contemplates the futility of earthly matters and the promise of heavenly peace in some of the most beautifully serene music ever written. Our featured composer, Nico Muhly’s song cycle written for Nicholas Phan juxtaposes settings of accounts of immigration through Ellis Island with those of texts protesting the United States’ Chinese Exclusion policies of the late-19th century. Nicholas describes his encounters with Muhly’s music as being both “artistically and personally transformative,” and recalls the Stranger’s premiere as the first time he felt his identity had been respectfully represented in a work of classical music. Our Screen Door performance of the work is a new arrangement for string orchestra, featuring Palaver Strings.

Songwriter Kenyatta Emmanuel is an artist and activist who has shared his music from Sing Sing to Carnegie Hall, offering a full live concert the same day of his return home after serving 24½ years in prison. His music and message explore the beauty of life, reminding us of all that we hold in common. Our Screen Door 2023 ends with a song by Kenyatta that embodies so much of what the music programmed this year expresses – “holding on to love, holding off despair and I’m holding out hope”.

PROGRAM

GABRIEL KAHANE Little Love

J.S. BACH Ich Habe Genug BWV 82

NICO MUHLY Stranger

KENYATTA EMMANUEL Holding Out Hope (arranged by Thomas Cabaniss)

Honorary Concert Sponsors: Ronald Stern and Elisse Walter