True Concord Voices & Orchestra: A Dream So Bright: Choral Music of Jake Runestad
Reference Recordings

It's not uncommon for choral works to be based on lofty subjects such as God and the universe. By comparison, the two world premiere recordings of Jake Runestad compositions performed by True Concord are earth-bound and grounded in human experience. Whereas Dreams of the Fallen has to do with the devastating effects of war on soldiers and the trauma they deal with after returning home, Earth Symphony explores the profound impact humans have had on the planet. In both cases, the American composer's music is bolstered by the texts of collaborators, the words of Todd Boss in the latter and the writings of poet Brian Turner, a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan war, in the former.

True Concord and Jake Runestad were, it seems, a combination waiting to happen. Founded in 2004 by music director and conductor Eric Holtan, the Tucson, Arizona-based True Concord Voices & Orchestra received a Grammy nomination in the Best Choral Performance category for its premiere Reference Recordings release, Far in the Heavens: Choral Music of Stephen Paulus, and it wouldn't surprise if A Dream So Bright were similarly recognized. Runestad's received his own fair share of awards, a Grammy nomination for the Conspirare-performed The Hope of Loving and a 2022 Emmy for Earth Symphony. He's been the recipient of commissions from renowned ensembles and organizations, in part, perhaps, because his music addresses issues relevant to contemporary human experience, the two presented on A Dream So Bright examples. That he studied with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Kevin Puts at the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University gives some hint of the talent in question.

Recorded in May 2023 at Camelback Bible Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona, the works differ in other ways beyond subject matter. Dreams of the Fallen is a single-movement work of twenty-six minutes duration that augments the company's vocal and instrumental forces with Jeffrey Biegel's piano. Commissioned and premiered by True Concord in 2022, Earth Symphony features the ensemble alone in a half-hour setting structured in five movements. Piano doesn't function as mere ornamentation in Dreams of the Fallen, incidentally, but rather as a central element, Runestad's desire to have the instrument “embody a character or person who could speak clearly and directly to the listener” successfully achieved. To prepare for the writing of the work, he studied soldiers' personal reports that outlined the effects of post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD). Witnessing death during combat and even having to kill others makes the reality the soldier returns to and the transition to regular life difficult. Having determined that returning soldiers need above all else both a sense of closure and support from friends and family, the composer, armed with Turner's texts, began fashioning the work into its completed form.

While Dreams of the Fallen is a single movement, it nonetheless progresses through three episodes. The words “and I keep telling myself that if I walk far enough, or long enough, someday I'll come out the other side” appear near the beginning but also return towards the end, the intent being to capture the soldier's pre- and post-war experience. The first section quickly establishes a turbulent war zone via ominous gestures, dissonance, and intimations of chaos. The piano's centrality is announced early too with Biegel sensitively embroidering the music alongside the plaintive sounds of True Concord's voices, strings, and woodwinds. Energetically charged sequences follow that suggest the harrowing disorientation of combat and the shock that comes from witnessing and administering death. Solo piano passages suggest a dreamlike flow of consciousness as the soldier tries to emotionally grapple with what's happening. A poignant central episode provides a transitional moment of calm to reflect on the carnage. A virtuosic solo passage from Biegel precedes the segue into the peacefully resolving final section with its reiteration of the opening text. Runestad articulates sentiments we all share in expressing the hope that Dreams of the Fallen might “challenge us to listen, feel, grieve, and seek to understand those who have given of themselves for our country.”

The genesis of Earth Symphony was influenced, of course, by daily news reports about fires, floods, hurricanes, droughts, and tsunamis around the globe and the changes global warming is bringing to the planet. Some of them are due to human conduct, and how we address our choices and behaviour will be a major factor in how things play out in the years ahead. For his collaboration with Boss, Runestad decided to anthropomorphize Mother Earth, such that the texts unfold as a five-part monologue by a maternal figure recounting how her children first admired and then harmed her, and of how she ultimately survived. “Evolution” initiates the work dramatically with flurries of horns, strings, and percussion, the movement evoking earth in its earliest form with humanity's arrival imminent. With percussion giving the movement thrust, “Ambition” addresses the hubris to which humanity's often prone by invoking the Greek myth of Icarus and his plummet from the sky after flying too near the sun. “Destruction” is understandably the most turbulent movement in using an anguished shriek of vocal and instrumental resources to suggest the ecological cataclysms with which we've become all too familiar and of which we're the cause (“Briefest of species, what have you done?”). “Lament” is naturally hushed yet no less effective in Earth's eloquent response to humanity's perishing (“Sleep now, my children, now your days are done”). Despite having undergone devastation, the planet readies itself in “Recovery” for its next evolutionary stage, the music shimmering, gentle, and infused with hope and optimism.

September 2024