Tucson choir ends 2024-25 season with Grammy nominated oratorio

True Concord Voices & Orchestra this weekend is closing out its best season since the pandemic with a work that earned the ensemble its first Grammy nomination.

This will be the first time since True Concord premiered Stephen Paulus‘s “Prayers & Remembrances” on Sept. 11, 2011, with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra that it will perform it in Tucson. True Concord commissioned the oratorio, underwritten by longtime patron Dorothy Dyer Vanek, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

“The message of the piece is most definitely relevant today,” said Music Director Eric Holtan. “Of course Paulus’s music still speaks today. He is one of America’s greatest composers and we were fortunate to work really close with him.”

The work anchors the ensemble’s season finale “Mozart Requiem & Prayers and Remembrances” and caps a season that saw a number of sold-out performances and near sell-outs.

“Our audiences are all the way back from COVID,” Holtan said. “Some folks have taken their time for good reason to come back to the concert hall, but we have our full audience back and we’re thrilled.”

This weekend’s concert — there are three performances: in Green Valley on Friday, March 28; and at Catalina Foothills High School on Saturday and Sunday, March 29-30 — also looks to have packed houses. As of early this week, tickets were still available for Friday and Saturday’s performances, but less than a dozen remained for Sunday’s matinee.

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True Concord recorded “Prayers and Remembrances” on its Grammy-nominated 2015 album “Far In the Heavens: Choral Music of Stephen Paulus”; Paulus, who died in 2014, was awarded a posthumous Grammy for Best Contemporary Classical Composition.

True Concord performed “Prayers and Remembrances” last at Lincoln Center on Sept. 11, 2015 — the day the album was released. That concert also featured Mozart’s Requiem, which it has performed four times in its 21 years, most recently in 2019 when Holtan had to add a fourth performance to meet audience demand.

Where “Prayers and Remembrances” seeks to offer a message of hope and renewal in times of grief and loss, Requiem aims to console those left behind.

“The Requiem is a piece of consolation for those left behind and that is precisely what Paulus’s piece is,” Holtan said, noting that the text for “Prayers and Remembrances” — “They are all gone, gone into the world of light” and “Grant the departed rest and shine light on them” — “relates directly to the Requiem.”

“The perspective of the Paulus piece is from the people who are here and we are honoring them much like a traditional requiem does,” Holtan said. “Paulus gives assurance and comfort of eternal rest and eternal light. And there’s a reason why Mozart’s Requiem is so famous. It is just incredible music. It’s dramatic it’s fiery but it’s completely soothing. Paulus’s music is likewise. It’s dramatic, but also at times contemplative.”

True Concord opens this weekend’s concerts in Green Valley’s Valley Presbyterian Church, 2800 S. Camino del Sol, at 4 p.m. Friday. They take it to Catalina Foothills High School, 4300 E. Sunrise Drive, at 7 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $23.50-$63.50 through trueconcord.org. The concert also will be streamed on True Concord’s website for $5 per viewer.