Monday, September
26,
at 6, 8 and 10pm
The Alchemy Building,
5209 Wilshire Blvd (near the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, site
of “TUTANKHAMUN and the Golden Age of the Pharoahs).
Sponsored
by The World Festival of Sacred Music.
2005 World Festival of Sacred Music - Los Angeles
(September 17 to October 2) 1,000 artists and 43 sacred events of
music and movement over 16 days, in venues all over the Los Angeles
area -crossing neighborhoods, cultural, religious and ideological
boundaries in the spirit of world peace.
WWW.FESTIVALOFSACREDMUSIC.ORG
Sunday, October
2, at 4:30pm
The Bowers Museum in
Santa Ana, Orange County (site of “MUMMIES: Death and the
Afterlife in Ancient Egypt”)
Friday, November
4th, at 6:30pm
The De Young Museum of
Art, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
(site of “Daughter of Re: HATSHEPSUT, King of Egypt”) |
 The
ritual life of ancient Egyptians was deeply concerned with the journey
of the soul. Ceremonial texts found in such classic writings as
"The Book of the Dead", as well as in more iconiclastical
works such as Akhenaten's "Hymn to the Sun", metaphorically
relate the passage of the sun through day and night to the human
experience of birth, life, death and rebirth.
Inspired
by these ancient texts, and overcome by the death of both his parents
within less than 9 months of each other, composer Berenholtz of
San Francisco began creating a body of musical work entitled "The
Psalms of RA". In it he set many ancient Egyptian texts to
his own new music, as well as setting comparable texts from the
Hebrew and Sumerian traditions, among others. His intent was to
honor the journey of life and death, to demonstrate the parallel
ritual threads of ancient Near Eastern traditions that speak to
a universal human experience, and to celebrate the sun as our common
ancestor, thus offering a new vision of a spiritual foundation for
peace in the Middle East.
This autumn,
much of the music from "The Psalms of RA" will be premiered
in California, in connection with three landmark exhibitions of
Egyptian antiquities, two of which will subsequently go nationwide.
Choral pieces, as well as chamber music featuring Western symphonic
instruments combined with traditional Near Eastern winds, strings
and percussion, will be performed. Composer Berenholtz will be among
those performing, and will explain to the audience how the various
texts, performed in the ancient languages, relate to the journey
of the soul. He will also elaborate on his
orchestration choices as they relate to the kind of instruments
used in ancient times. This promises to be a very special state-wide
tour of live contemporary sacred music. |
JIM
BERENHOLTZ is a multifaceted artist who has been training
with native cultures in the living wisdom of the Earth for
over 30 years.
Music,
Prophecy and Sacred Ceremony in celebration of our new Center’s
first year!
