Vespers for a New Dark Age

Vespers For A New Dark Age was commissioned by Carnegie Hall for the 2014 Ecstatic Music Festival, and first performed at Carnegie's Zankel Hall on February 22, 2014. The work is a distorted, wild, blasphemous take on the traditional Vespers prayer service, in which fragments of poems by Matthew Zapruder replace the customary sacred text. His poems are beautiful, haunting, and very much of our time; they explore the way we confront technology, ghosts, death, doubt and God in our "new dark age". Percussionist Glenn Kotche rattles boundaries of the written score with his expansive virtuosity and supernatural energy, and the instrumentalists of my ensemble Victoire, armed with synthesizers, organs, amplified strings and winds, further bridge the sonic gap between the new and the old, the profane and the spiritual. Electronic producer Lorna Dune's contribution to this record cannot be overstated. She helped me shape the sound of nearly every moment, electronic and acoustic. She also created a sublime remix of my piece A Thousand Tongues, transforming a work for electronics, cello and voice into something completely unexpected and entrancing. - Missy Mazzoli