Excitement, Anticipation and Pride

Our all-American concert opens with the Illinois premiere of Christopher Theofanidis’s Dreamtime Ancestors. We’re proud to be part of a consortium of orchestras to commission this work.

“This is the third time the ESO and I have participated in a consortium, or joint commission,” said Maestro Lawrence Eckerling, ESO music director. “What goes with the territory is excitement, anticipation and then pride. Excitement for the prospect of playing a part of bringing a new piece into the world. Anticipation waiting the several months or even a year until we receive the score to begin studying it. And pride with the satisfaction of ultimately giving a terrific performance with the wonderful members of the ESO!”

The piece is a three-movement, 17-minute tone poem for orchestra with accompanying text. It is based on the Australian aboriginal creation myths connected to “dreamtime,” where each of us is connected to each other through our “dreamtime ancestors” in the past, present and future. This is referred to as “all-at-once time.”

Christopher Theofanidis writes for a variety of musical genres, from orchestral and chamber music to opera and ballet. His work, Rainbow Body, which is loosely based on a melodic fragment of Hildegard of Bingen, is one of the most performed orchestral works of the past 15 years and has been programmed by over 120 orchestras internationally, including the ESO in March 2012.

In addition to his orchestral pieces, Theofanidis has written widely for the stage, from a work for the American Ballet Theatre to multiple dramatic pieces, including The Refuge with Leah Lax for the Houston Grand Opera and Heart of a Soldier with Donna DiNovelli for Thomas Hampson and the San Francisco Opera. His large-scale piece, The Here and Now, for soloists, chorus, and orchestra, based on poetry of Rumi, was nominated for a Grammy award in 2007.