Constellation Men’s Ensemble fourth-annual NOVA new music series (NOVA stands for New Original Vocal Art) will be presented as an HD film experience premiering six vocal works exploring themes of house and home. And you can attend for free, from anywhere with an internet connection.
Fulfilling its commitment to provide meaningful concert experiences in Chicago and beyond, Constellation Men’s Ensemble (CME) will premiere composer Sean Ellis Hussey’s vocal oratorio about the nation’s foster care system. Hussey spent three years interviewing people within the foster care system about their stories, their struggles, and their successes. In his score, interviewees telling their stories serve as electronic interludes, while ensemble singers provide the narration, singing quotes from data, news articles, and legislation about the foster care system. Cook County is the third-largest foster care system in the nation.
“We’re excited to put an artist spotlight on the foster care system. The way that we do or don’t provide aid, compassion, and dignity to our youth directly relates to our society as a whole,” says CME Executive Director Ryan Townsend Strand. “This is a topic that many people have no knowledge about, but that directly affects them. We’re excited to bring these stories to light through music and interviews.”
All of the newly composed music in the concert explores themes of shelter, displacement, and reunion within and without the four walls of a house. In addition to the Hussey premiere, CME will perform other world premieres by Alex Berko, Rachel DeVore Fogarty, Daniel E. Gawthrop, Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek, and Andrey Stolyarov.
The concert will be filmed in HD by Atlas Arts Media in a parking garage to visualize the stark and desolate reality of what home can sometimes feel like in the foster care system: a place of constant turnover. Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music agreed to allow the filming over two weekends to support the project. The virtual concert is free to attend with donations encouraged.
A portion of proceeds will benefit three Chicagoland organizations dedicated to improving the foster care experience for children:
- Fostering Dignity, which provides backpacks to children moving into or within the foster care system,
- Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metropolitan Chicago, which offers one-on-one mentoring for children and teens, many of whom are foster youth, and
- CASA of Cook County, which provides court-appointed special advocates for children in protective custody.
WHEN AND WHERE: 5 p.m. CST, Sunday, June 20 (Father’s Day) – Online. Access from anywhere with an internet connection. CME chose Father’s Day for this performance because of its direct correlation with the concert’s theme of “House & Home.”
TICKETS: FREE! CME hopes its concert will inspire conversation, donations, and learning that will help improve the foster care system for all children. Register to attend or make a donation here or at constellationensemble.org.
ABOUT CONSTELLATION MEN’S ENSEMBLE Constellation Men’s Ensemble (CME) is a Chicago-based vocal group founded in 2013 and dedicated to creating distinct performances in unique spaces, empowering the next generation of singers, and expanding the repertoire for men’s vocal music by commissioning new works from emerging and established composers. CME won the American Prize for Choral Performance in 2019. In 2020, CME collaborated with La Caccina, another Chicago vocal ensemble, to perform a concert dealing with memory loss and generated more than $1,000 in donations to the Alzheimer’s Association of Illinois. Similarly, CME hopes its upcoming NOVA IV: House & Home concert will generate awareness, discussion, and donations to improve the foster care system in Chicagoland and beyond.
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