Performers:
Bella Voce & The Bella Voce Sinfonia, conducted by Andrew Lewis
Program:
Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe, and David Lang | Lost Objects ^
^ Midwest Premiere Performance
The 2025 Ear Taxi Festival begins with a powerful invitation to listen deeply. Bella Voce, one of Chicago’s most beloved and adventurous vocal ensembles, opens the festival with Lost Objects, a contemporary oratorio by Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe, and David Lang—the visionary founders of the Bang on a Can collective.
Lost Objects is a genre-bending work that fuses the sonic textures of Baroque music with a modern sensibility, layering choral writing, a period-instrument orchestra, electronics, and poetic text into a seamless meditation on memory, ritual, and the artifacts of modern life. With harpsichord, string ensemble, and subtle electronic enhancements, the piece feels simultaneously ancient and futuristic—sacred and secular, intimate and expansive.
This haunting and evocative work reflects on the things we’ve lost—objects, relationships, identities—and the ways we grieve, remember, and carry them forward. Through its bold juxtapositions and expressive clarity, the work offers a poignant reflection on how sound can help us make sense of a fragmented world.
Lost Objects sets the tone for this year’s festival theme, The Composer’s Voice, by illustrating how composers today are not only redefining musical language but also responding directly to the emotional and cultural landscape of our time. As Bella Voce gives voice—literally and figuratively—to this moving piece, we welcome both new and returning audiences to explore what “new music” means when past and present collide.
