Winter Warmer II:
Illuminations

Saturday, March 8, 2025 | 2:00 PM

Hannaford Hall, USM | Portland

The New York Times extols the East Coast Chamber Orchestra for “mixing the transparency and coherence of a string quartet with an orchestra’s warmth and heft,” praising their “luminous” performances and “sheer exuberance.” This evocative program centers around the surrealistic song cycle Les Illuminations by Benjamin Britten, for which ECCO will be joined by American tenor Nicholas Phan, described by the Boston Globe as “one of the world’s most remarkable singers.” The program also features William Grant Still’s Danzas de Panama, based on a collection of Panamanian folk tunes, and Hanna Benn’s introspective Where Springs Not Fail, weaving text and melody in an ethereal, meditative style. Finally, John Adams’ iconic Shaker Loops, a masterful musical “epiphany of physical and spiritual transcendence,” brings PCMF’s 2025 Winter Warmer season to a rapturous close.

William Grant Still Danzas de Panama (1948)

I. Tamborito

II. Mejorana y Socavón

III. Punto

IV. Cumbia y Congo

Benjamin Britten Les Illuminations for Tenor and String Orchestra, Op. 18 (1939)

I. Fanfare

II. Villes

III. Phrase and Antique

IV. Royauté

V. Marine

VI. Interlude

VII. Being beauteous

VIII. Parade

IX. Départ

Hanna Benn Where Springs Not Fail (2016)

John Adams Shaker Loops (1978)

I. Shaking and Trembling

II. Hymning Slews

III. Loops and Verses

IV. A Final Shaking

Doors open at 1:30 PM. Program run time is approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes including a brief intermission. Join the artists in the lobby following the performance for mingling and refreshments.

Did you know? Did you know? Nicholas Phan’s fourth Grammy nomination is for his latest album, “A Change is Gonna Come,” recorded with Portland’s very own Palaver Strings. Winners announced Sunday, February 2!

Meet The Artists

Rebecca Fischer
violin

J Freivogel
violin

Rachel Henderson Freivogel
cello

Andrew Gonzalez
viola

Michael Katz
cello

Jia Kim
cello

Min-Young Kim
violin

Li-Mei Liang
violin

Kobi Malkin
violin

Anthony Manzo
bass

Nicholas Phan
tenor

Melissa Reardon
viola

Miho Saegusa
violin

Jessica Thompson
viola

Yezu Woo
violin

Meet The Composers

Benjamin Britten
1913-1976

Benjamin Britten was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other vocal music, orchestral and chamber pieces. His best-known works include the opera Peter Grimes (1945), the War Requiem (1962) and the orchestral showpiece The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1945). Britten's other works range from orchestral to choral, solo vocal, chamber and instrumental as well as film music. He took a great interest in writing music for children and amateur performers.

Britten's song cycle Les Illuminations (The Illuminations), Op. 18, was first performed in 1940. It is composed for soprano or tenor soloist and string orchestra, and sets verse and prose poems written in 1872–1873 by Arthur Rimbaud, part of his collection Les Illuminations. Britten began writing the cycle in Suffolk in March 1939 and completed it a few months later in the United States. It was the first of his song cycles to gain widespread popularity.

William Grant Still
1895-1978

William Grant Still was an American composer of nearly two hundred works, including five symphonies, four ballets, nine operas, over thirty choral works, art songs, chamber music, and solo works. Because of his close association and collaboration with prominent African-American literary and cultural figures, Still is considered to be part of the Harlem Renaissance. Often referred to as the "Dean of Afro-American Composers," Still was the first American composer to have an opera produced by the New York City Opera.

Still was inspired to write his own “Danzas de Panama” after listening to the traditional Panamanian folk music collected by ethnomusicologist Elisabeth Waldo. The opening movement, Tamborito, immediately captures the listener’s attention with the players percussively striking the sides of their instruments to create a rhythm. Next comes Mejorana, which sounds like a carefree Panamanian waltz. The slowish third movement, Punto, has a gentle and very familiar Mexican sound to it. The last movement, Cumbia y Congo, begins again with a percussive hand-pounding to a high-spirited and fast dance.

John Adams
b. 1947

John Adams is an American composer and conductor. Among the most regularly performed composers of contemporary classical music, he is particularly noted for his operas, many of which center around historical events. Apart from opera, his oeuvre includes orchestral, concertante, vocal, choral, chamber, electroacoustic, and piano music. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, Adams grew up in a musical family and was exposed to classical music, jazz, musical theatre, and rock music. He attended Harvard University, and later, while teaching at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, developed a minimalist aesthetic first fully realized in Phrygian Gates and later in the string septet Shaker Loops.

Written in 1978, Shaker Loops began as a piece called Wavemaker in which Adams tried to emulate the ripple effect of bodies of water in his music. The piece was a commercial failure, but Adams kept the idea of repeating loops of oscillations on string instruments. He retitled the piece Shaker Loops, both because of the "shaking" of the strings as they oscillate between notes and the idea Adams had of Shakers dancing to repetitive, energetic music

Hanna Benn
b. 1987

A composer, vocalist, and genre-spanning collaborator, Hanna Benn has been creating music for over a decade. Her multi-disciplinary approach has incorporated dance, opera, and theater — blurring genre and discovering new sonic landscapes in the process. Her work as a composer has taken her across the globe, from most recently a new spiritual for GRAMMY Award-winning choir The Fisk Jubilee Singers and a premiere at The Perth International Arts Festival, to Antwerp performing with the B.O.X Baroque Orchestra. Past works have been performed by the Northwest Symphony, Saint Helen's String Quartet, Seattle Chamber Players, and the Indianapolis Symphony.

Where Springs Not Fail is a lush and melancholy sojourn for string orchestra, inspired by the poem “Heaven-Haven” by Gerard Manley Hopkins. In the poem, Heaven-Haven is a metaphor for a contemplative life. It offers a story of a young woman who commits herself to a convent life. She desires the ability to leave the temporary pleasures and pains of her current material life in the hope of a simple, pure, and protected joy of spiritual life and ultimately heaven.