Valentineβs Day is months away, but True Concord Voices & Orchestra is in the mood for love this weekend.
Not necessarily the red roses and white wine kinda love songs, but ones that really dig deep into love in all its shades, from the giddiness of a new romance to the irritation of a relationship in the rut.
βThis is How You Love,β the second concert in True Concordβs 20th anniversary season, takes its name from a song co-written by True Concordβs first-ever composers-in-residence Jocelyn Hagen and Timothy C. Takach. The 13-movement work is bookended by Eric Whitacreβs βFive Hebrew Love Songsβ and Brahmsβs Liebeslieder Walzer (Love Song Waltzes).
Hagen and Takach, who are married, wrote βThis is How You Loveβ in 2017 for the Seattle, Washington, vocal ensemble Esoterics. It was the first time they had co-written a piece together.
The work sets to music texts from 10 poets interspersed with transcripts from actual couples therapy sessions from the pre-eminent therapist Ellyn Bader, cofounder of the Couples Institute in Menlo Park, California.
βIt truly covers the gamut, but the thread that runs through is this strong bond of love throughout good times and bad,β True Concord founder and music director Eric Holtan said of the piece. βItβs constant and it prevails; it keeps them together.β
Hagen and Takach are no strangers to Tucson audiences. True Concord in November 2019, months before the COVID-19 pandemic ground life to a halt, performed the Arizona premiere of Hagenβs βThe Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci,β which the ensemble is bringing back this season as part of its βMozart & Hagen: Two Important Encoresβ concert Jan. 26-28, 2024.
True Concord last season performed the world premiere of βHere I Am,β a piece the ensemble commissioned from Hagen. The performance in late January came after two years of pandemic delays and months after True Concord performed the Southwest premiere of Takachβs 65-minute outer space fantasy βHelios,β accompanied by elaborate video projections and narration from βStar Trekβ actor John de Lancie.
True Concord Voices & Orchestra vocalist Emily Lau was among the singers last January who read texts during the world premiere of Jocelyn Hagenβs βHere I Am,β which True Concord commissioned.Β
Holtan said βThis is How You Loveβ touches on universal aspects of love that could apply to many people, set against a musical backdrop that he described as βcontemporary but itβs tonal and lyrical.β
βItβs an excellent setting to all these works,β he said.
This weekendβs performances will be the first time since 2010 that True Concord has performed Whitacreβs 10-minute work, which uses texts from poems written in Hebrew by Whitacreβs now ex-wife Hila Plitmann. It will be the first time in a decade that the ensemble has performed the Brahms, which takes up the concertβs second half.
True Concord will perform βThis is How You Loveβ at 3 p.m. Friday, Nov. 17, at Valley Presbyterian Church, 2800 S. Camino del Sol in Green Valley; and 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 18, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 19, at St. Andrewβs Presbyterian Church, 7575 N. Paseo del Norte on Tucsonβs northwest side. Tickets are $23.50-$63.50 through trueconcord.org.
Holtan said Hagen and Takach will participate in talkback conversations at the end of this weekendβs performances.
Jocelyn Hagen researched 46 prominent women whose voices are included in the text of her new work "Here I Am," commissioned by Tucson's True Concord Voices & Orchestra.
