Evan Chambers’ The Old Burying Ground,
featuring the University Symphony Orchestra, released on CD

June 2010

Evan Chambers

In February of 2008, the University Symphony Orchestra, Kenneth Kiesler conducting, toured the Midwest, with stops at Oberlin College and Cornell University, en route to Carnegie Hall, the final destination. The repertoire included Mahler’s magnificent Symphony No. 5 and a new work, The Old Burying Ground, by composer and SMTD faculty member Evan Chambers, commissioned by Kiesler expressly for the tour.

Now, a CD of The Old Burying Ground has now been released, on the Dorian/Sono Luminus label. Recorded at Hill Auditorium, it features Kiesler and the USO, folksinger Tim Eriksen (Cold Mountain), tenor Nicholas Phan (BM ‘01), soprano Anne-Carolyn Bird, and Evan Premo (BM ‘08) on double bass. The words of poets Keith Taylor, Richard Tillinghast, Thomas Lynch—all U-M faculty, or affiliated—Paula Meehan, and Jane Hirshfield are threaded throughout the two complete song cycles coupled with powerful orchestral movements.

In an essay, “Michigan’s Song of Itself,” run in The New York Times in April 2008, poet Thomas Lynch wrote of the experience, “It was a brilliant night! The great hall packed, the music transcendent, the voices resplendent, the ovations longstanding.” Jane Hirshfield penned her own reminiscence, a poem entitled French Horn that ran in The New Yorker in February 2009, to mark her own impressions of the evening.

Great reviews continue for the work, as one critic wrote, “This powerful piece of music is a guaranteed top selection in the play lists of the traditional classical music listener, and bridges the gap to reach music lovers of all genres. The folk undertones paired with the poetry and intricate orchestral composition truly give new life to those interred at The Old Burying Ground.”