Joan Szymko will lead her own works in Boulder and Cherry Hills Village

By Peter Alexander April 10 at 5:15 p.m.

Composer Joan Szymko has set to music poems by several of the leading poets of our times, including Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry. 

A conductor as well as composer, Szymko will lead Boulder’s Ars Nova Singers in performing her own works Friday in Boulder and Saturday in Cherry Hills Village (7:30 p.m. April 12 and 13; details below).

As a composer, Szymko does not limit her choice of texts to widely honored, prize-winning poets. As she herself points out, she also has set poems from the middle ages and by grade school students. Stressing the breadth of her inspiration, she has written, “My goal is to compose music that invites the audience in while challenging the notion that accessibility and musical integrity are incompatible concepts. 

“I have composed choral music to be performed with actors, poets, Taiko drummers, modern dancers, aerialists and accordion players. I have set texts by fourth graders and Pulitzer Prize winners, medieval mystics and contemporary poets. I am drawn to texts that invoke divine grace, speak to the universal yearning for good and that nurture a compassionate heart.”

Szymko grew up in Chicago and studied choral music at the Chicago Musical College at Roosevelt University and the University of Illinois at Urbana. She currently lives in Portland, Ore., where she served on the choral music faculty at Portland State University. She recently retired as artistic director of Portland’s Aurora Chorus, and holds workshops with choirs around the United States and abroad.

Her works have been commissioned by groups ranging from professional choruses to church and community choirs. They have been published by Oxford University Press, Walton Music, Roger Dean Publishing, and other leading publishers of choral music. 

The program that Ars Nova will present features Szymko’s “It is Happiness,” based on poems by Oliver including the much loved “Wild Geese,” as well as Berry’s popular “Peace of Wild Things,” a text by Teresa of Avila, and other diverse sources.

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“Bloom”
Ars Nova Singers, Joan Szymko, guest conductor
With the CU Treble Choir and instrumental soloists

• Joan Szymko: Vivos Voco (I call out to the living; text by Julian of Norwich)
• —“How Did the Rose” (text by Kim Stafford)
• —Lo Lefached  (Be not afraid; text by Rebbe Nachman of Breslov)
• —Nada te turbe (Let nothing disturb you; text by Teresa of Ávila)
• —Invitation to Dance  (texts by Hafiz, adapted by Daniel Ladinsky)
• —Where is the Door to the Tavern?
• —Until
• —The God Who Only Knows Four Words
• —Ubi Caritas (Where charity is)
• —It is Happiness (poetry by Mary Oliver)
• —Be It Therefore Resolved (poetry by Kim Stafford)
• —The Peace of Wild Things (poetry by Wendell Berry)
• —Look Out (poetry by Wendell Berry)
• —It Takes a Village
• —We are All Bound Up Together (text by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper)

7:30 p.m. Friday, April 12
First United Methodist Church, Boulder

7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 13
Bethany Lutheran Church, Cherry Hills Village

TICKETS including livestream of Saturday’s performance