Terra Nostra
The Solar System, (not to scale) showing the Sun, Inner Planets, Asteroid Belt, Outer Planets, and a comet. By Harman Smith and Laura Generosa (nee Berwin), graphic artists and contractors to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Public Domain via Wikipedia
On this week's Prairie Performances, Friday night at 7 pm on WILL-FM 90.9, Terra Nostra is a beautiful new work for soloists, choruses, and orchestra by Stacy Garrop, Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra’s Music Alive Composer-in-Residence. Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra is joined by the University of Illinois Oratorio Society and the Central Illinois Children’s Chorus to perform this moving music, which focuses on the relationship between our planet and mankind.
Cast in three sections, Part I: Creation of the World, Part II: The Rise of Humanity, and Part III: Searching for Balance, Terra Nostra celebrates the beauty of our planet and explores how we can create more awareness for our planet’s plight to find a balance for living within the Earth’s resources.
The libretto includes poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Wendell Berry, William Woodsworth, Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Gillespie Magee, Jr., and Walt Whitman.
Terra Nostra: An Oratorio about Our Planet (3/9/19)
Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra
Stephen Alltop, Conductor
Garrop | Terra Nostra
University of Illinois Oratorio Society, Andrew Megill, Conductor
Central Illinois Children’s Chorus, Andrea Solya, Conductor
Sarah Gartshore, soprano
Meg Bragle, mezzo-soprano
Steven Soph, tenor
David Govertsen, bass