Led by music director Malcolm J. Merriweather, Dessoff presents a program that reflects on the Civil War as seen through Whitman’s eyes. As a volunteer nurse in a Washington, DC military hospital, he was witness to the many horrors that wars inflict. René Clausen’s Three Whitman Songsand Jeffrey Van’s A Procession Winding Around Me: Four Civil War Poems offer contemporary settings of Whitman’s poetry, the latter accompanied by guitar. The program also features two world premieres: Ian Sturges Milliken’s Whispers of Heavenly Death and a Dessoff commission by Eve Belgarian, British composers Stanford and Holst both set “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” Whitman’s elegy on the death of Abraham Lincoln, with full Victorian splendor. Dessoff also presents the final installment (over three seasons) of Bach’s six motets, Der geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf, BWV 226,which was written for a funeral.

3:15 pm pre-concert talk by Dr. Karen Karbiener

4:00 pm concert

A Procession Winding Around Me: Four Civil War Poems     Jeffrey Van (b. 1941)
Der geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf, BWV 226                   Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Three Whitman Settings                                                        Rene Clausen (b. 1953)
Four Walt Whitman Songs                                                 Kurt Weill (1900-1950)
Whispers of Heavenly Death(premiere)                              Ian Sturges Milliken (b. 1984)
WHITMAN PREMIERE                                                                        Eve Beglarian (b. 1958)
Ode to Death,H. 144, Op. 38                                                 Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
Elegiac Ode, Op. 21                                                                Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924)

Tickets: $20-40 in advance, $25-45 at door
Purchase at dessoff.org in advance.