AM I BORN | NEW SOUNDS

#4600, American Oratorios: David T. Little and Julia Wolfe

John Schaefer ; Host, New Sounds and Soundcheck

Listen to music from two American oratorios, Am I Born by composer/librettist team of David T. Little and Royce Vavrek and Julia Wolfe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Anthracite Fields. While an oratorio definitely tells a story a la Handel’s Messiah, and many of the well-known ones happen to be sacred, the form is a concert piece, and not staged.

Hear most of composer, drummer, and bandleader David T. Little and librettist Royce Vavrek's Am I Born which is set across centuries in the Brooklyn neighborhood “plowed under to build the Brooklyn Bridge,” (Bright Shiny Things.) Am I Born draws inspiration from both Francis Guy’s Winter Scene in Brooklyn and the hymn from 1816, Idumea, whose melody is associated with text called, “Am I Born To Die.” The recording, released in 2022, features the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, and NOVUS NY, led by Julian Wachner, and soprano Melissa Hughes.

– Caryn Havlik