David Dalle
Thursday December 24th, 2020 with David Dalle
From Darkness to Light: Annual Winter Solstice program starring Osvaldo Golijov's brand new work "Falling Out of Time".

Every year around the winter solstice we join a human heritage dating back millennia in the northern hemisphere, confronting the longest night with joyful, festive noise. Today, the darkness comes from Osvaldo Golijov's new composition "Falling Out of Time", which was commissioned, performed, and now recorded by the Silkroad Ensemble, Yo Yo Ma's cross-cultural ensemble which features global luminaries such as Kayhan Kalhor and Wu Man. Osvaldo Golijov has had nearly decade long silence which he explains as the result of falling into a depression. During this time, he encountered "Falling Out of Time" by Israeli novelist David Grossman. The novel is described as "partly a folk tale, partly a play, partly a novel in verse", and is a meditation on the grief of an adult son, written five years after David Grossman lost his son to military conflict. This 80 minute work in 13 movements follows a man who wanders around in a daze of grief searching for his lost son, questioning his son "Where are you? What are you? And who are you there?". He is joined by fellow mourners suffering their own private grief, yet his wife refuses to join him. Eventually, he returns to his wife, knowing it is impossible to reach his dead son. This work is exceptionally dark, however it is written with Golijov's wonderful instinct for mixing traditions and instruments with singers and musicians from the western classical tradition as well as singers and musicians from South American and Asian traditions such as Venezuelan singer Biella da Costa, Kayhan Kalhor on kamancheh, Wu Man on pipa, Wu Tong on sheng and voice. This work, along with Jacob Cooper's "Stabat Mater Dolorosa" from earlier this year, were both composed before the global pandemic, but I find they both capture the essence of grief and loss in this horrible, horrible year. And don't worry, after darkest night, dawn will come, both in music and in life!