Te Deum performing their 2024 Christmas concert, “A Precious Child,” at Village Presbyterian Church last December (photo by Brian Rice Creative)
The All-American program presents works exploring our links to the earth, each other, faith and God
Exploring our link to the world, each other, and the spiritual realm, Te Deum chamber choir presents “Harmony of Connections,” the closing concert of their 11th season.
This season, the organization entered a new phase of its evolution and is making the transition to professional choir. It is now paying its singers, a considerable shift that requires substantial funding, but also allows the ensemble more versatility.
“We are able to do more music more quickly,” said Matthew Christopher Shepard, Te Deum founder, executive and artistic director, “because it does change the level of expectation of the singer. We’re able to get to a higher quality finished product in a shorter amount of time, and that enables us to be able to offer more music throughout a season.”
This shift in professionalism caused Shepard to consider other implications: “What is Te Deum’s relationship and role in keeping great music happening here in Kansas City, here in America, here in the world … what is our role and our function?”
To that end, this concert features an exclusively all-American program, and throughout the season they’ve presented music by American composers, many living — and local — to the community.
Previous concerts this season featured Randall Thompson’s “The Peaceable Kingdom,” traditional spirituals, David Lang’s “The Little Match Girl Passion” and Ed Frazier Davis’ “Veni, Veni Emmanuel” (commissioned and premiered by Te Deum in 2019).
This concert is also an opportunity to bring together some bucket list works that Shepard has long wanted to share with Te Deum and their audience.
The program is conceived in three interconnected sections, offering a variety of musical styles.
Part one takes a look at “that pale blue dot that is Earth in this larger galaxy, and what that means for how big or small we are,” he said. The section is anchored by Meredith Monk’s wordless 1987 “Earth Seen from Above,” with its expansive, pulsing energy.
“We will just celebrate the Earth around us and what home means … how we are connected with the land, with home, with place,” said Shepard.
The second part is about how we connect with each other, especially in family or romantic settings. It features Samuel Barber’s 1940 “Reincarnations,” the impetus for the entire concert’s concept. The work is in three interconnected parts, based on the Irish poetry of James Stephens. The first song (“Mary Hynes”) speaks of first love, the feeling of falling in love, said Shepard, “that obsession and delight with a potential partner.” The second (“Anthony O’Daly”) is a lamentation over the death of a loved one. And the last song of the set (“The Coolin”) transitions from young love to “what mature love looks like toward the end of life,” he said.
The final part of the concert concept involved the individual’s connection with faith and God. While Te Deum often performs sacred masterworks for Kansas City audiences — “te Deum” is Latin for “thee, God” — they do not exclusively sing sacred repertoire. But concerts typically do have a spiritual connection or concept, if not from a specific belief system.
“The lens I want to take is: How does that influence the way we connect with the world around us? How does that influence the way we connect with our neighbor?” said Shepard.
The central piece for that section is a new work by Anthony Maglione: “A Good Tree.”
Maglione has served as Te Deum’s composer-in-residence for the past two years, writing a number of pieces for the group, including “Love Begotten” and “A Hebrew Blessing,” both of which premiered in 2024.
“Working with Te Deum and Matthew Shepard has been wonderful,” said Maglione. “Throughout my time as composer-in-residence, I’ve given myself the liberty to craft truly artistic reflections on sacred traditions that have meant a great deal to me. Oftentimes commissions will come with guidelines that don’t fully allow me to express what I’m hoping to express, but with Te Deum, I have much more freedom to try new sounds and challenge myself to fit my ideas to their distinct and beautiful sound.”
While “A Good Tree” was still in the development stage in early spring, Maglione intends to incorporate electronic music into the piece, collaborating with the Kansas City Electronic Music & Arts Alliance (KCEMA). “Fixed media allows me to incorporate sounds and sampled media from some disparate faith traditions in a manner that would be very challenging to perform in a fully live context,” said Maglione, who anticipates having a mixture of sounds including spoken word, chant and synthetic textures.
Including an electronic component is a first for Te Deum, which usually performs a cappella or, at times, with chamber ensemble or orchestra.
“I’m always interested in doing new things, stretching myself, stretching the group,” Shepard said.
And for Shepard, collaborating with Maglione allows them to have work that really homes in on each concert’s message and intent.
For Shepard and Te Deum, there is also a sense of responsibility as “an active and contributing member of the choral world,” said Shepard, by performing new music.
“Te Deum has the platform and the opportunity and the ability to help new works come into creation. It isn’t our primary thing that we do. It is obviously not the only thing that we do, but it’s an important piece of what we do, to help new works be created and then offered to the world.”
The concert will also feature works by Lawrence-based composer Forrest Pierce, a professor of composition at the University of Kansas School of Music, whose works often reference our spiritual connections and connections with nature.
During this concert of connections, Te Deum is also aiming to strengthen the connection between the music and the audience and stimulate interaction within the audience itself.
“There is something valuable to the community around you, even if you don’t know them,” said Shepard, who had a few different ideas about facilitating some in-the-moment audience connections. “We’re going to make very subtle, but intentional, connections throughout the concert as well, as we consider how we connect with the world and our fellow human.”
Recognizing our link to the world and each other is one of the first stages of empathy. With this concert, Te Deum encourages us to see and appreciate these connections, individually, globally and beyond.
Te Deum presents “Harmony of Connections” at 7:30 p.m. May 31 at Village Presbyterian Church, and 3 p.m. June 1 at St. Mary Episcopal Church. For more information visit www.te-deum.org.
