from Genesis 1, 2:1–7 (King James Bible)

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.

And the evening and the morning were the first day.

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven.

And the evening and the morning were the second day.

And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after its kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after its kind: and God saw that it was good.

And the evening and the morning were the third day.

And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years:
And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the day from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
And God created great whales, and ev’ry living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and ev’ry winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and ev’ry thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over ev’ry creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over ev’ry living thing that moveth upon the earth.
And God said, Behold, I have given you ev’ry herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and ev’ry tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; To you it shall be for food. And to ev’ry beast of the earth, and to ev’ry fowl of the air, and to ev’ry thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given ev’ry green herb for food: and it was so.
And God saw ev’ry thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.

And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the hosts of them.
And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, and ev’ry plant of the field before it was in the earth, and ev’ry herb of the field before it grew:
For the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.
But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

from Cables to the Ace or Familiar Liturgies of Misunderstanding by Thomas Merton

Slowly slowly
Comes Christ through the garden
Speaking to the sacred trees
Their branches bear his light
Without harm

Slowly slowly
Comes Christ through the ruins
Seeking the lost disciple
A timid one
Too literate
To believe words
So he hides

Slowly slowly
Christ rises on the cornfields
It is only the harvest moon
The disciple
Turns over in his sleep
And murmurs:
“My regret!”

The disciple will awaken
When he knows history
But slowly slowly
The Lord of History
Weeps into the fire.

from Evening Train by Denise Levertov

Each day the shadow swings
round from west to east till night overtakes it,
hiding
half the slow circle. Each year
the tower grows taller, spiralling
out of its monstrous root-circumference, ramps and
colonnades
mounting tier by lessening tier the way a searching
bird of prey wheels and mounts the sky, driven
by hungers unsated by blood and bones.
And the shadow lengthens, our homes nearby are
dark
half the day, and the bricklayers, stonecutters,
carpenters bivouac
high in the scaffolded arcades, further and further
above the ground,
weary from longer and longer comings and goings.
At times
a worksong twirls down the autumn leaf of a
phrase, but mostly
we catch
only the harsher sounds of their labor itself, and
that seems only
an echo now of the bustle and clamor there was
long ago
when the fields were cleared, the hole was dug, the
foundations laid
with boasting and fanfares, the work begun.
The tower, great circular honeycomb, rises and
rises and still
the heavens
arch above and evade it, while the great shadow
engulfs
more and more of the land, our lives
dark with the fear a day will blaze, or a full-moon
night defining
with icy brilliance the dense shade, when all the
immense
weight of this wood and brick and stone and metal
and massive
weight of dream and weight of will
will collapse, crumble, thunder and fall,
fall upon us, the dwellers in shadow.

from Blue: The Derek Jarman Poems by Keith Garebian

Timbers black with pitch
shiver on the shingle.
Gulls wheel,
squabble over the fishermen’s catch,
quicksilver of the sea.
The tide invades
the arid strand,
home to larks and tough grasses,
cormorants skim the waves.
A cottage with two prospects
(the old lighthouse
and nuclear plant)
both lit by sights and sighs.
Barbed wire around your garden
cannot keep melancholy at bay.

from Cables to the Ace or Familiar Liturgies of Misunderstanding by Thomas Merton

Slowly slowly
Comes Christ through the garden
Speaking to the sacred trees
Their branches bear his light
Without harm

Slowly slowly
Comes Christ through the ruins
Seeking the lost disciple
A timid one
Too literate
To believe words
So he hides

Slowly slowly
Christ rises on the cornfields
It is only the harvest moon
The disciple
Turns over in his sleep
And murmurs:
“My regret!”

The disciple will awaken
When he knows history
But slowly slowly
The Lord of History
Weeps into the fire.

from Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Snowfields sparkle like shattered glass
A windy squall roars in
Bright blood in the snow and the print of wings
Everybody is hungry.

On nights like these the Windigo comes
You can hear its unearthly shrieks
Shaped like a man ten feet tall
It hunts in the freezing night

This beast is no bear, no howling wolf
Windigos are not born, they are made
A human who eats their own kind
If it bites, you are Windigo too

Windigo, Windigo, Windigo
Frost-white hair, arms like trees
Yellow fangs have chewed off its lips
Its heart is made of ice

When snow is deep and the deer are gone
Is the time of the Hunger Moon
An elder hunts but never returns
Desperation is our soup

Windigo, Windigo, Windigo
A gnawer of human bones
Hunger that will never be sated
Consumed by its own consumption

Monsters are born of our failings
We all have Windigo in us
It’s the name for the force
That wants only its own survival

Windigo hungers, Windigo eats
Eating makes it more hungry
Windigo hungers and eats again
Windigo will never be full

Windigo is to take too much
Windigo lives in all of us
Its footprints are all around if you look
An evil spirit that eats us

Windigo footprints stomp
in the sludge of polluted lakes
They’re in forests mowed down by greed
And lagoons of chemical waste

We lose the earth and ourselves
If we spend our lives making money
Only to buy more things
That feed a bottomless hunger

Windigo takes tops off mountains
Leaves its footprints on oil-slicked sand
Tracks of greedy consumption
So many have been bitten

Belongings won’t fill our need
We are beings at a feast
The food only makes us hungrier
For we crave real belonging

from a speech by Greta Thunberg

One and half degrees

I am here to say: Our house is on fire
In less than twelve years
our mistakes will be set in stone
Our house is on fire

One and half degrees warmer

Politicians have failed
The media have failed
Our systems have failed
And people are failing

Now is the time to speak clearly and to act

You say nothing is black or white
But that is a dangerous lie
This case is black and white
Our house is on fire

One and half degrees warmer

I don’t want your hope
I don’t want your optimism
I want you to panic
I want you to feel my fear

One and half degrees warmer

The bigger your carbon footprint
The bigger your moral duty
I want you to act
Act as if your house is on fire

Because your house is on fire

from Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

There was once a town
where all life seemed to live in harmony
farms and fields of grain

Robins, catbirds, doves

In the spring great
clouds of bloom above green fields
and fish lay in clear pools

Jays, finches, sparrows

Mists of fall mornings
when the deer crossed the fields
and the blaze of birches delighted the eye

Bluebirds, meadowlarks, wrens

Even in winter
red berries and plants gone to seed
rose above the snow to feed the birds

Flickers, cardinals, buntings

But then a strange blight came
and things began to change
Cattle sickened and died

Robins… doves

On the farms hens brooded
but no chicks hatched
And the baby pigs died in days

Meadowlarks… wrens

Apple trees blossomed
but with no drone of bees
There would be no fruit

Cardinals…

It was a spring without voices.
The roadsides were silent
The streams had no more fish

The birds, where had they gone?

Some weeks before
a white powder had fallen like snow
on the roofs and fields and streams

The birds, where had they gone?

Some weeks before…
The people did it themselves.

from “To Music, to becalm his Fever” by Robert Herrick

Charm me asleep, and melt me so
With thy delicious numbers,
That, being ravish’d, hence I go
Away in easy slumbers.
Ease my sick head,
And make my bed,
Thou power that canst sever
From me this ill,
And quickly still,
Though thou not kill
My fever.

Fall on me like the silent dew,
Or like those maiden showers
Which, by the peep of day, do strew
A baptime o’er the flowers.
Melt, melt my pains
With thy soft strains;
That, having ease me given,
With full delight
I leave this light,
And take my flight
For Heaven.

Cantori New York, praised by the New York Times for its “spirit of exploration” and “virtuosity and assurance,” has for 40 seasons featured new and neglected works that deserve to be performed and heard.

A four-time winner of the ASCAP/Chorus America Award for Adventurous Programming, Cantori has a strong reputation for artistic excellence, innovative programming, and imaginative collaborations with distinguished musicians and actors—including Kathleen Chalfant, Maryann Plunkett, Nadia Sirota, Bradley and Douglas Balliett, the Cassatt String Quartet, Prism Saxophone Quartet, and the Gregg Smith Singers. Appearances have included the opening season of Zankel Hall with Michael Tilson Thomas, Great Performers at Lincoln Center, World Financial Center Arts & Events, Green-Wood Cemetery with presenters Death of Classical, multiple collaborations at Lincoln Center with the verismo company Teatro Grattacielo, three productions with the American Ballet Theater at Lincoln Center, and a guest performance at the 2023 New York Film Festival.

Cantori’s recordings, on labels such as Arsis, Albany, Newport Classics and PGM, include Derrick Skye’s This Place, Philip Lasser’s The Elements, Paul Crabtree’s The Metamorphoses, Echoes and Shadows, FIVE by Michael Dellaira, Frank Martin’s Le Vin Herbé (Opera News Editors’ Choice), and an upcoming 2025 release on Navona Records.

Six-time ASCAP Award winner Mark Shapiro conducts choruses, orchestras, and opera. Currently in his 34th season as Artistic Director of Cantori New York, Shapiro is also Music Director of The Cecilia Chorus of New York, and served as Music Director of The Prince Edward Island Symphony from 2012 to 2023. Characterizing his leadership as “insightful,” the New York Times has praised his “virtuosity and assurance,” with Opera News hailing his “superb pacing and great confidence.”

In 2023, Shapiro was appointed Principal Conductor of the newly established Marshall Opera in New York City. Additional opera credits include five productions with Juilliard Vocal Arts and appearances with American Opera Projects, Center for Contemporary Opera, Encompass New Opera, Opera Company of Middlebury, and Underworld Opera, as well as the opera programs of Hofstra and Rutgers.

Shapiro has recorded for Albany, Arsis, Newport Classics, and PGM. An album of music by Philip Glass with Irish violinist Gregory Harrington and Shapiro conducting the Janacek Philharmonic was released in 2020. Radio appearances have included WQXR, WNYC, Minnesota Public Radio, and Sirius.

Shapiro has been a teaching artist with the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Program and teaches conducting at the Juilliard School (Extension Division), Mannes (The New School), Fort Greene Conducting Workshop, and Teachers College (Columbia). Each summer he directs the conducting program of the European American Musical Alliance in Paris. Shapiro is a member of the Steering Committee of Music and Medicine at Mt. Sinai Hospital. He is represented by Miguel Rodriguez and Athlone Artists.

markshapiromusic.com

Praised for her “coppery warm tone” (Classical Voice North America), mezzo-soprano Gabrielle Barkidjija is an accomplished performer on both the operatic and concert stages. Gabrielle recently earned critical acclaim for her portrayal of Dodo in Detroit Opera's Breaking the Waves and made her Carnegie Hall Debut as the mezzo-soprano soloist in the world premiere of Daron Hagen’s Everyone, Everywhere with the Cecilia Chorus of New York. This winter, she will be a Studio Artist with Sarasota Opera, covering Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia and singing Dorotea in Stiffelio. She has been a resident artist with Carnegie Hall SongStudio, Detroit Opera, Merola Opera, Aspen Opera, Central City Opera, and Tanglewood, and has received scholarships and awards from many organizations, including the Rochester Oratorio Society, Gerda Lissner Foundation, and Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions.

Bergamot Quartet is fueled by a passion for exploring and advocating for the music of living composers with creative programming, community-oriented audience building, and frequent commissioning. The quartet is in high demand as interpreters and co-creators of new music, having premiered hundreds of works by students of all ages and developed numerous significant new pieces with composers at the forefront of contemporary concert music. They maintain a full season each year of concerts ranging from DIY events to appearances at major venues. 

Bergamot’s 2025 season includes a concert at National Sawdust celebrating the release of Samuel Torres’ A Dance for Birds, composed for Bergamot and Torres’ Latin jazz sextet; residencies with Tulane University and Manhattan School of Music; a return to the Raritan River Music Festival; a collaboration with Cantori New York; a performance on “The Village Trip” series in Greenwich Village, where they will premiere Samuel Adler’s 11th and Louis Karchin’s 4th string quartet. They have recently launched “Project Resonance” with composer/performer Dan Trueman, a multi-tiered project which will foster the creation and performance of new works for Bergamot playing a set of hardanger instruments (traditional Scandinavian 9-stringed folk instruments). As educators, Bergamot will serve on faculty this summer at New Music On The Point, Wildflower Composers Festival, and Arts Letters and Numbers Creative Music Intensive. They also operate the monthly concert series “Bergamot Quartet Extended” as a medium to showcase their many inspiring collaborators and present new work.

Based in New York City, Bergamot Quartet is Ledah Finck and Sarah Thomas, violins; Amy Tan, viola; and Irène Han, cello. Bergamot Quartet was the inaugural Graduate String Quartet in Residence at the Mannes School of Music 2020–2022, where they were mentored by the JACK Quartet.

bergamotquartet.com