PAUL WINTER'S WORLD OF LIVING MUSIC: MUSIC OF THE EARTH
EXPLORE PAUL WINTER'S
WORLD OF LIVING MUSIC:
Get Summer Solstice Tickets
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Join us to celebrate the Summer Solstice with a dawn concert at 4.30AM on June 22, 2013 in New York City's Cathedral of St. John the Divine. General admission tickets are $35. [ BUY TICKETS ]
Imagine yourself inside the world's largest Gothic cathedral in the predawn darkness as the canyon-esque space resounds with earth music played by Paul Winter's expansive world ensemble, and the great stained-glass windows are gradually illuminated by the first sunrise of summer.
For 16 years, Winter has gathered musicians from around the world in the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York to create inspired, spontaneous music at the spiritually charged moment of the summer solstice.
The Summer Solstice Celebration will take place at 4:30 am on Saturday
morning, June 22,
2013. There will be one performance only.
Paul Winter has long regarded the time of summer solstice as an
auspicious opportunity
for music-making. From the lineage of this event, over the past decade,
has come a body
of acclaimed live recordings, including Winter's 1999 Grammy-winning
album Celtic
Solstice, with Davy Spillane, Karan Casey, Joanie Madden, and Eileen
Ivers; and his
Grammy-nominated album Journey with the Sun, in 2001, featuring Mickey
Hart, Arto
Tuncboyaciyan, Niamh Parsons, and Spillane.
Winter explains his affinity for this milestone, along with his
aspiration for the event:
"Summer solstice is one of the great turning points of the year, when
the sun is at its peak
and the days abound with the promise of life's fullness. It is a
serenely powerful time in
which the beauty of the natural world can infuse our spirit, bring us
alive to the present,
and perhaps awaken a deeper sense of relatedness to the community of
life, to the Earth,
and to the cosmos."
"My dream, with this sunrise celebration, is to offer an experience of
this resonance,
through a deep-listening journey in the mystical ambience of these
early morning hours
within the awesome space and acoustics of this largest Gothic cathedral
in the world. Our
music begins in total darkness, and proceeds in a continuum, emanating
from different
places in the Cathedral. Gradually, as the great stained-glass windows
slowly illuminate,
the light joins the sound to carry us into the full dawning of the
summer."
In the same way that these longest days of the year in June are the
polar opposite to
December's longest nights of the year, the simplicity of this
all-acoustic Summer Solstice
Sunrise Celebration is in total contrast to the highly theatrical
Winter Solstice Celebrations
that the Consort has presented at the Cathedral over the past 30 years.
Winter welcomes
this opportunity to present a more intimate and reflective musical
journey, in which
players and listeners alike can revel in the extraordinary acoustics of
the 150-foot dome
of the Cathedral. Winter calls it, "our most profound event of the
year."
The Cathedral of St. John the Divine is located at Amsterdam Ave. and West 112th St., Manhattan.
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