True Concord takes us to outer space with 'Helios' SW premiere

True Concord Voices & Orchestra kicked off its 19th season with a regional premiere and a regional Emmy Award.

The premiere of “Helios” by Timothy Takach came Saturday night before an audience that loosely filled the Catalina-Foothills High School Auditorium. The Rocky Mountain Emmy Award, presented to composer Jake Runestad for True Concord’s February 2022 world premiere recording of Runestad’s “Earth Symphony” (“Choral”), was announced at ceremonies in Phoenix right around the same time.

Although True Concord did not get the trophy itself, Saturday’s audience gave Eric Holtan and his professional choir resounding applause and a few hearty “whoop-whoops” from a fan near the back of the hall.

In Runestad’s “Earth Symphony,” which True Concord commissioned, we got a glimpse of Earth’s hope for humanity as it seeks to destroy and then restore her.

In “Helios,” Takach widens the lens to give us a closer look at the cosmos from Pluto to the Sun, complemented with brilliant visuals created by Deborah Johnson (aka CandyStations) that were projected on a giant screen onstage.

Award-winning actor John de Lancie (“Star Trek,” “Days of Our Lives,” “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic”) performed a prologue introducing the nearly hourlong work. He pointed out some of the quiet noises that greeted us as we entered the auditorium on Saturday: the distant sound of a baby crying, the crackling of a campfire, the rush of a gentle breeze and the voice of Chucky Berry singing his trademark rocker “Johnny B. Goode.”

No, it wasn’t someone’s cellphone ringtone. It was ambient sounds and sound effects recorded for the Voyager Golden Records sent up with the Voyager spacecraft in 1977 as a time capsule of sorts of life on Earth.

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De Lancie’s monologue set the stage for Takach’s a capella narrative that True Concord performed with the finesse of a large-scale choral symphony. “Helios” borrows texts of published poems and poems commissioned by True Concord to paint a picture of the universe, from Patricia Monaghan’s pledge to control chaos (“Pluto (At the Border)”) to her hopeful vision of “Mercury (Move Towards Freedom)” that promises a way to move toward chaos, change and turbulence to discover “so many degrees of freedom.”

Takach employs an array of vocal techniques and textures from staccato rhythms to chants and a series of frenetically played notes that sounded like an ocean swell.

In the hands of Holtan and his choir, “Helios” sounded larger than life, as if the piece were accompanied by an orchestra instead of just their voices.

Holtan programmed the concert’s second half with the delightful and familiar “Ode to Joy” finale from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, with Tucson pianist Alexander Tentser doing the heavy lifting playing Liszt’s piano transcription of Beethoven’s score. Tentser played with a true sense of passion and joy for the music and the choir. He was simply sublime.

Takach’s “Helios” was the first of two works composed by True Concord’s inaugural composers-in-residence. The second comes in January, when True Concord performs the world premiere of Takach’s wife Jocelyn Hagen’s “Here I Am” with soprano Susanna Phillips.

The piece was set to premiere at the 2022 Tucson Desert Song Festival last January, but it was postponed to the 2023 Song Festival due to the pandemic.