For our final concert of the season, Music Director Grant Gershon selected the extravagant and joyful Missa Latina by Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra.

The biggest production of the year -- with 120 singers, a full orchestra augmented by percussion, and international soloists -- the Missa Latina is exuberant, rhapsodic, and full of rhythm and dance of Latin America. It is a wonderful showpiece for our magnificent chorale and soloists. It’s really a very extraverted, joyous take on the mass –-a mass for people who find masses too dull or tedious, because it’s all about the rhythm. In fact, the percussion in the orchestra is like a giant salsa band.

This work is absolutely tailor made for Disney hall because there’s so much going on with the interplay between the instruments of the orchestra and different section of the chorus all going full throttle.

The work is tonal, very accessible, yet at the same time, Roberto Sierra is a very creative new voice on the music scene. He draws upon his own roots growing up in Puerto Rico and New York City for the energy of the work.

Heidi Grant Murphy and Nathaniel Webster premiered the piece with the National Symphony in Washington D.C. two years ago and have performed in every performance of the piece throughout the country, including recent performances in Milwaukee and Houston. It is clear the work is already becoming part of the repertoire.

Join us for a wonderful closing to a great season!

Visit Roberto Sierra's website: www.robertosierra.com

Read what the Press is saying:

The 2006 Kennedy Center's premiere of Missa Latina was a stunning success. Like a spontaneous eruption, the audiences that attended the three performances jumped from their seats to cheer the work. T. L. Ponick from the Washington Times wrote: "...the most significant symphonic premiere in the District since the late Benjamin Britten's stunning 'War Requiem'... Mr. Sierra's new work is, quite simply, shockingly brilliant..."

Following the Washington success the Casals Festival programmed the work for a second performance last March (2007) with equally enthusiastic responses from the audience and the press. Missa Latina was also performed in Hawaii where the Introitus, Sanctus and Agnus Dei were performed at the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra's end-of-year concerts (December 29-30, 2007) conducted by Andreas Delfs. The Houston and Milwaukee Symphony Orchestras, as well as The Los Angeles Master Chorale have programmed the work for the 2008-2009 season.

Missa Latina "...the most significant symphonic premiere in the District since the late Benjamin Britten's stunning War Requiem was first performed in the still-unfinished Washington National Cathedral in the late 1960s ...Mr. Sierra's new work is, quite simply, shockingly brilliant...Despite the Hispanic expectations evoked by the work's title, Mr. Sierra's Mass often relies on classical European musical tradition. This makes his Latino eruptions all the more unexpected and irresistible -- no more so than in this delightful 'Sanctus.'In this section's 'Benedicte,' Mr. Sierra also convincingly breaks the postmodernist taboo against melody, giving his soprano the most achingly beautiful solo we have heard in decades. Chorus, orchestra and soloists then take the 'Agnus Dei' to an emotionally satisfying and redemptive conclusion. A huge bravo to Mr. Sierra for having the courage to invite audiences back to the concert hall by gifting them with something wonderful." The Washington Times (T. L. Ponick)