Ensemble Altera Chamber Choir – “We Remember”

ENSEMBLE ALTERA is fast becoming a leading American chamber choir dedicated to bringing thoughtful, engaging, and relevant programs of choral music to in-person and digital audiences at home and around the world. The group is versatile, working on multiple scales, in a wide range of idioms, across the full gamut of medieval to modern to minimalist music. Led by internationally acclaimed countertenor Christopher Lowrey, Altera comes from the Italian word for change, and the ensemble prides itself in its truly transformative approach to music-making. Recent projects undertaken by the group include an innovative series of digital concerts recorded in empty parking garages during the Covid pandemic, as well a virtual series of Christmas concerts produced for viewers around the world.

Altera has developed a reputation with audiences for bold programming that invites listeners to imagine connections between works from many different historical perspectives to tell one unified and edifying story. Some of these projects include ‘illumine’, centering on the myriad representations of light across the repertoire, ‘Hail Mary’, a concert based on Marian themes, and ‘Music For Elizabeth’, a program devoted to music heard in Elizabeth I’s court. This summer, Altera will mount a Covid Memorial Project entitled ‘We Remember’, featuring music to uplift, heal, and bring together the community in the wake of the ongoing Covid crisis.

Altera is hosting a Covid-Memorial concert, which will be held at Blessed Sacrament Church, 239 Regent Avenue, Providence, RI 02908, Sunday, July 11th, 8PM. The concert will draw on penitential end-of-life, passing over, rest and remembrance themes with a repertoire spanning Purcell to Esenvalds, including a new work to amplify the voices of emerging composers.

For a better sense of the group’s work, please see the below YouTube recordings:

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Ensemble Altera has been performing throughout the pandemic. A parking garage was a place the group could gather with ample ventilation with a strong acoustic — kind of a concrete cathedral, if you will. 
The group’s later projects included: its Christmas project, its Renaissance project at Aldrich Mansion, four live-streaming concerts, a hymn-recording project, and the Amazing Grace music video. Thanks to the ample and free-testing provided by the State of RI the group was able to safely quarantine/bubble for short and intense periods to offer music to an avid listenership. 

Altera’s return to in-person music this July 11 with its Covid-Memorial concert represents one of the few choral groups doing anything in the R.I. area. Some of the country’s top choral singers are joining forces with Altera’s local talent to help the group form the first truly professional choir in RI. As part of this event, Altera is trying to bring the community a sense of coming together and sharing. The program is designed around themes of healing, uplift and joy. In addition, Altera has sponsored a composition competition, and is ready to announce the winner, Daniel Gledhill, an unpublished composer working as an accompanist at UCLA. His piece is a truly moving setting of the poem/hymn “For the Beauty of Earth” (by F.S. Pierpoint, written in 1864), and everyone should have a chance to come listen to it if they can.

Background Information

The ensemble, founded in Rhode Island in 2010, prides itself on its truly transformative approach to music-making. Recent projects include: an innovative series of digital concerts recorded in empty parking garages during the Covid pandemic, as well as another virtual series of Christmas concerts produced for audiences around the world.

Choral music is going through a resurgence and will expand as the Covid restrictions are lifted. Altera is at the fore with bold programming that channels baroque classics, renditions of popular songs, all the way to minimalistic and experimental work. 

Learn more, here: https://www.ensemblealtera.com/