In the first program of its 26th concert season, The Esoterics will explore the human capacity for openness, VULNERABILITY. On the weekend that follows Valentine’s Day, our society’s celebration of romantic love, this performance will follow the emotional journey of lowering of one’s defenses, from expressing desire and devotion, challenging authority and conformity, risking injury, gaining consent, healing from brokenness, navigating through resentfulness, arriving at forgiveness, and emerging again into the world, ready to be vulnerable yet again.
Giving voice to texts by James Baldwin, Olympe de Gouges, Bei Dao, Paul Laurence Dunbar, e. e. cummings, Hāfez, Jennifer Powers, Rainier Maria Rilke, Rabindranath Tagore, and William Carlos Williams, The Esoterics’ VULNERABILITY will include music by Abbie Betinis, Anna-Karin Klockar, Evan Flory-Barnes, Reena Esmail, Ted Hearne, Jennifer Higdon, David Lang, Tebogo Monnakgotla, Roxanna Panufnik, August Read Thomas, Mari Ésabel Valverde, and a commissioned world premiere by New York composer Philip Wharton.