By DR. CORY BOULTON
There is a moment in Christopher Tin’s “The Lost Birds” when the music stops reaching for beauty and starts reaching for something harder to name. It is the sound of witness — of people who know something is being lost and refuse to look away.
That is exactly why I built a concert around it.
On Sunday, July 26, the Gratus Choral Ensemble will perform “The Lost Birds” at First Federated Church. The concert is free and open to the public. A pre-concert lecture begins at 3:30 p.m. The performance follows at 4 o’clock.
“The Lost Birds” is a choral song cycle written in response to the ongoing extinction of bird species across the globe, a loss driven by human activity and felt across entire ecosystems. Tin’s score draws on texts in multiple languages, weaving together grief, beauty, and urgent witness into a single sustained musical elegy.
What makes this performance exceptional is not just the music. It is the people singing it.
Gratus is not a standing ensemble. It is a project-based professional choir, called together when the music calls for it. Its singers are music teachers, conductors, and professional performers who travel from across the country to gather in one place, for one purpose. They are people who understand that a choir is not a collection of voices, but a collective state. And when that state is right, something moves through the room that no one can quite explain, and no one who was there forgets.
There is deep affection among them. A kind of knowing that comes from choosing, again and again, to show up for something that matters. This music asks something of its audience, I’ve said. It asks us to listen not just to the choir, but to what is no longer there.
The concert is presented in partnership with the Sierra Club, the Audubon Society, and First Federated Church. A love offering will be received in support of environmental change efforts.
Admission is free.
— Dr. Cory Boulton is Director of Choral Activities at Bradley University and researcher in embodied educational leadership.