Once you start listening to Zachary Moore’s The Tyger, you won’t be able to stop, which makes this the perfect piece for a concert grand finale. A familiar William Blake poem, “The Tyger,” might cause audiences to wonder what’s new with this classic? But Zachary Moore does two exceptional things with this piece that not only refresh it, they transform it into something unhead of.
Zachary adds a few percussion instruments, which make the already dramatic text that much more significant. This is an immediate cue to audience member that something great will be asked of them. Secondly, borrowing a trick from Medieval music, Zachary sets the famous Dies Irae text against The Tyger for a striking contrast that still allows the texts to interact in surprising, yet intimate ways. Zachary sheds new light on both The Tyger and traditional sequence text. Blake’s Tyger becomes the agent of wrath from the Dies Irae, showing the audience they have much more to learn from experiencing this piece.
The work is formally compelling, surprisingly easy from a choral perspective, and extemely powerful.
Hear it. See it. Buy Zachary J. Moore’s The Tyger on MusicSpoke!
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