The Esoterics

In 2023, The Esoterics celebrated its 30th anniversary! It's in no small part due to donations from people like you, and others in our passionate and supportive community of audience members and fellow artists. We are grateful!  We are excited and honored, as well, that The Seattle Times chose to celebrate The Esoterics and our 30th season in this feature article published In December 2023.

30 years and counting!

Over the past year, The Esoterics continued our tradition of highlighting distinctive contemporary choral compositions - showcasing harmonies, dissonances, themes & variations across our specialized spectrum of the musical and the metaphysical. See our Media Gallery below for a sampling!

We opened 2023 with a piece in ten movements by LA composer, Rex Isenberg, entitled Messiahs false and true. Composed for choir, with organ and percussion, as well as spoken oratorio, it examines the phenomenon by which societies may elevate and gravitate toward individuals who promise salvation - in some perceived form or fashion - during periods of crisis or cultural upheaval. In addition, we premiered a separate new composition by Rex, titled If we have wisdom (reprised in March 2024) - a piece that sets the text of a letter written by George Washington to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1790.

Later in the season, we featured two centennial celebrations that showcased many of the a cappella works by György Ligeti and by Ned Rorem. Two very different centenarian composers: Ligeti had a fascination with micro-polyphony, micro-rhythm and arythmic canon; best known in cinematic circles as the composer of Lux aeterna from Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Ned Rorem, who died in November 2022 at the age of 99, didn't align himself with any particular composition school, instead simply writing what he "wanted to hear"; his friends and influences included Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein and his published work includes over 500 art songs, candid diaries of his life, and of course: choral music. The Esoterics performed all of his secular a cappella songs at this show. 

In December 2023, we closed the season with the world premiere of a work by LA composer, and winner of The Esoterics' POLYPHONOS competition in 2014, Dale Trumbore. Her piece, commissioned for The Esoterics, sets poems by Barbara Crooker to a cantata of 24 movements that takes the shape of a cyclical calendar year. Entitled A calendar of light, the piece reflects on how our relationship to change - from the personal and quotidian to the wide-ranging and global - is mirrored in our relationship to the changing seasons. The piece calls for reflection and action, with recurring refrains of call-and-response that invite the audience to sing with the ensemble. 

Now in our 31st year, we hosted the Yale Glee Club here in the PNW for our first show of the season in March 2024. Each chorus sang a set of their own music, and then combined forces, forming an ensemble of more than 100 voices! At this show, The Esoterics performed compositions by contemporary Yale alum composers, including past Esoterics collaborators and POLYPHONOS competition winners. 

May 2024 Upcoming Performances!

Please join us May 18 and 19, 8pm at Plymouth United Church in downtown Seattle. A livestream link will also be available when tickets go on sale.

The Esoterics is thrilled to present a unique multi-sensory / multi-media production, featuring compositions by our director, Eric Banks, entitled SPLENDOR & SOLACE: A rare glimpse into community and divinity. The program will open with three shorter pieces: Try to understand is an Italian meditation on the nature of God, setting passages of Umberto Eco's novel, Baudolino to a composition that navigates the circle of fifths from start to finish (in an aural nod to the text that overlays it, in fact). The second - Cul sec! - is a raucous and bawdy homage to lavish revelry (and the trouble it causes). Sung in French, naturally - it weaves a set of poems entitled Six banquets by Jean-Francois Pierre, through a percussive and jaunty romp within the halls of spirited lovers and resolute debauchery. The third, entitled Hold, sets a poem by Anna George Meek. The piece reflects on the communal and mutually supportive nature of choral singing (esp. "staggered breathing") - offering this example as both exhortation and invocation. 

The centerpiece of the show, entitled To have been there before, will close the program. It features three octets in an immersive choral-symphonic recitation across eleven movements. It sets several excerpts from John Muir's Travels in Alaska, ornamented by various words for colors and natural phenomena in Tlingit. The Esoterics vocalists will be accompanied by various orchestral instruments. Original film footage of the Alaskan wilderness and aurorae will augment this musical landscape. 

Please join us in creating an exciting 31st season of music.

We deeply appreciate your continued support!