Hear my Prayer

In this concert – featuring music for the Lenten and Easter seasons — we explores the space that music creates for prayer, grief, longing, and hope.

Spanning nearly 500 years of choral music, the program juxtaposes Renaissance polyphonic masterpieces with the sonic and expressive landscapes of the 20th and 21st centuries. We encounter the intense gravity of Robert White’s Lamentations, the meditative, ethereal beauty of Olivier Messiaen, and Francis Poulenc’s powerful musical interpretations of texts centered on penitence and reflection. Works by Per Nørgård and Sven-David Sandström offer fresh perspectives on prayer as both a deeply personal and a universal human experience.

Across different eras, styles, and musical forms, these works revolve around fundamental human experiences: guilt, powerlessness, hope, devotion, and a longing for grace. At times, the music is dense and dramatic; at others, it is simple and seemingly timeless. What unites these composers is a desire to let the voice convey what words alone cannot encompass.

Hear My Prayer is an invitation to listen – not only to the music, but also to the silence between the notes, and to questions that may have no single, definitive answer.