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THE RESONANCE COLLECTIVE PRESENTS
WHEN WE PLANT TREES
WITH LAUDE & CHRISTOPH BULL

A Concert Celebrating the First Bloom of
Koreatown’s New Community Garden

June 1; First Church Los Angeles

 

 

Los Angeles, CA — On June 1, 2024 at 7PM, the Resonance Collectives presents When We Plant Trees, a concert featuring the choral group, Laude, directed by David Harris, and organist Christoph Bull to inaugurate the planting of a new, regenerative, urban garden, the Cathedral Gardens, at the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles in Koreatown. The concert will feature world premieres of choral works by members of the ensemble, music by Indigenous composers Andrew Balfour and Sherryl Sewepagama, as well as nature-themed, choral masterworks by Leonard Bernstein and Ralph Vaughan Williams. There will also be a post-concert celebration in the church’s courtyard.

“We are thrilled to welcome Laude for their second appearance on the Golden Thread Concert Series and to celebrate the beginning of this community garden”, says Resonance Collective Artistic Director Fahad Siadat. “Both programs are opportunities for the audience to explore the notion of connecting to the vastness of nature: engaging with the vast world beyond ourselves as individuals and embracing the inherent interconnection and interdependence that exists between all living things.” 

The Cathedral Gardens at First Church were first envisioned by Laurie Dill, the Church’s first and current Director of Community Gardens & Urban Farms. A regenerative farming and gardening consultant who has worked with the LA Food Policy Council and the Garden School Foundation, Dill started attending First Church because of its exemplary music programs. Then, when Reverend Michael Lehman started the Church’s Food@First initiative, their food pantry and food donation program, during the pandemic, Dill pitched in and lent her expertise. 

“I saw the church’s campus and thought we could teach the community how to grow food for themselves and empower them to grow their own food,” says Dill. Thankfully, Dill and Rev. Lehman were on the same page right off the bat. “I went to Rev. Lehman after looking at Hoover Gardens in the back of the campus and said ‘yes, you can put a garden here!’” Dill and First Church then applied for, and received, a $200,000 grant from the California Department of Food and Agriculture to start work on the church’s urban garden. 

“The church can be a model for every urban church sitting on acreage in an urban, underserved neighborhood,” Dill states. “We just planted a medicinal garden, a culinary garden, and a butterfly garden in front of the Pilgrim School [a private school house in the Church] to serve as a sensory experience for the kids at the school. With this grant, we hope to plant 30 to 40 fruit trees and create a food forest on the church’s campus.” The Gardens will also serve as a hands-on lab for weekly gardening, cooking, and composting classes open to the public. The first phase of the Gardens began in the spring of 2024 with classes and the planting of a few small beds. The 2024-25 season will welcome groves of trees, and the transformation of larger spaces on the campus into educational and crop-bearing centers.

Celebrating the Gardens’ first bloom, the concert will feature four world premieres from members of Laude: Na Nuh Oori by Sharon Chohi Kim, Little Bird by Joanna Wallfisch, Photosynthesis by Grammy-Award winning vocalist Michael Jones; and David Harris’s Symphony For Voices 1 (Hearing Trees), a multi-movement symphonic fantasy that adapts texts by Sandra Cisneros, Edyka Chilomé, W.H. Auden, and Jiddu Krishnamurti to ask what it means to listen to plants. The program also features two choral works by Indigenous composers of Cree descent: Ambe by Andrew Balfour, based on an original song in Ojibway that is “a call to the people to the ceremonial way of life;” and Okâwîmâw Askiy (Mother Earth) by Sherryl Sewepagama, a vocable song with Cree words that calls upon humans to nurture and care for the land. The Cathedral Choir, the avocational choir at First Church, will join Laude in rousing renditions of Vaughan Williams’ “Linden Lea” and Bernstein’s “Make Our Garden Grow” from his operetta, Candide. 

Tickets for the performance start at $10 and can be purchased at resonancecollective.org.

 

CALENDAR EDITORS PLEASE NOTE:
THE RESONANCE COLLECTIVE PRESENTS WHEN WE PLANT TREES WITH LAUDE
Who: Laude; David Harris, director; Christoph Bull, organ
When: Saturday, June 1 at 7PM
Where: First Congregational Church of Los Angeles; 540 S Commonwealth Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90020
Ticket Link

Andrew BALFOUR		Ambe
BERNSTEIN/arr. R. Page		“Make Our Garden Grow” from Candide
David CONLEY		When We Plant Trees
David HARRIS		Symphony For Voices 1 (Hearing Trees) (World Premiere)
Michael JONES		Photosynthesis (World Premiere)
Sharon Chohi KIM		Na Nuh Oori (World Premiere)
Molly PEASE		Vast Blue
Sherryl SEWEPAGAMA		Okâwîmâw Askiy (Mother Earth)
Fahad SIADAT		Hymn to Aethon
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS		“Linden Lea”
Joanna WALLFISCH		Little Bird

Program subject to change

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The Resonance Collective seeks to cultivate curiosity and a sense of sacredness to the creative life of Los Angeles in an inspiring and supportive social environment. Embracing a diversity of cultural and spiritual approaches in how society defines “art” and “sacred,” the Resonance Collective welcomes and serves those interested in sharing spiritual uplift through music. Led by Artistic Director Fahad Siadat, the Resonance Collective furthers this mission through its three divisions: the Original Works program, which creates interdisciplinary, theatrical narratives based on spiritual transformation; the Golden Thread Concert Series, which curates exceptional music from all religions and cultures; and the N.E.O. Voice Festival, which educates creative musicians interested in holistic vocal performance and writing for the voice.

Since starting in 2022, the Resonance Collective’s Golden Thread series has presented artists from the United States and around the world, including Micaela Tobin, Yuval Ron, Dwight Trible, Gamelan Burat Wangi, Jonathan Hepfer, and many others. In June 2022 at BroadStage, the Resonance Collective premiered The Conference of the Birds, an a capella oratorio based on the Sufi poet Attar’s classic poem, directed by André Megerdichian, with music by Fahad Siadat and a libretto by Sholeh Wolpé. The Resonance Collective also presented the oratorio on Nov 4, 2023 in Los Angeles, as part of the state-wide California Festival. 

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The members of Laude represent some of the brightest vocal and choral stars in Los Angeles. Ensemble and business leaders, composers, soloists, film and stage actors, and instrumentalists make up this robust chamber group, lending it noted flexibility and strength. Laude members sing with the Cathedral Choir as section leaders in addition to meeting on their own to present more intimate musical experiences. Each member also frequently presents solo features from the breadth of their professional acumen. By drawing on diverse bodies of repertoire, leaning into contemporary voices, and writing music that responds to the needs of the community, they add to a growing chorus of people seeking newness in non-dogmatic practice. Laude shares FCCLA’s commitment to inclusion, diversity, and equity. 

Laude performs concerts throughout the year including: Christmas Eve, various major works throughout the year, the annual MLK-inspired “Fulfilling The Dream” concert, and the renewed annual Bach Festival with Musica Angelica. They were featured at the 2022 Western American Choral Directors Association Conference, gave the concert premiere of Patrick Cassidy’s The Mass with Martin Sheen, and performed John Sheppard’s Media Vita with Monday Evening Concerts. Laude’s live accomplishments are matched by their recording prowess: they recorded a staggering 300 tracks from 2020-2022. They have also appeared in multiple episodes of CBS’s Strange Angel, and are featured in Jackson Greenberg’s score for Barlow Jacob’s film The Voyage Out.

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David Harris (DMA) specializes in new music, American music, and the intricacies of communication in singing, writing, and conducting. Through his "compassion-focused, artist-centered" rehearsal process, David opens vocalists into discovery spaces that prioritize each individual's experience. As a conductor, he has premiered hundreds of pieces for vocal and instrumental ensembles and theatrical works. An active composer/performer based in L.A., David explores elements in many styles including illuminating harmonics in vocal music, textural layering, structured improvisation, and contrasting resonant strategies. 

He is the Director of Music at FCCLA, where he directs the Cathedral Choir, and the professional ensemble Laude, with whom he recorded more than 300 tracks during quarantine. Through his work at FCCLA he has created several music/justice initiative crossovers, helping to raise tens of thousands of dollars for local charities by bringing music communities together, and has led new initiatives to present classical choral masterworks with choirs and The Great Organs including Mozart’s “Requiem,” Vaughan Williams’ “Dona Nobis Pacem,” Haydn’s Creation, Faure’s “Requiem”, Eleanor Daley’s “Requiem,” selected music by Italian women composers, and premieres like David Saldaña’s Canciones de Nochebuena and Patrick Cassidy’s The Mass. As a champion of new and underrepresented choral music, he leads the choirs at First Church in the premiere of dozens of new pieces each year.

He is also the Ensemble Director for the NEO Voice Festival, an annual festival that guides composers and vocalists to discover the vast potential of the human voice through the lens of science, compassion, and creation. He has also been a part of many of LA’s new music productions including Sweet Land with The Industry, music directing Stimmung with Long Beach Opera, leading Laude in John Sheppard’s Media Vita for Monday Evening Concerts, and having his graphic score, Ring of Bone, presented at the HEAR NOW Music Festival. David has played a key role in advancing the C4 Choral Collective model, helping to develop choral collectives in NY, Boston, and LA. 

David is the co-founder of VoiceScienceWorks, an organization helping vocalists learn to translate difficult voice science into immediately applicable tools. His choral works are published with See-A-Dot Music Publishing, Inc. David has articles in several publications including The Choral Journal, Voice and Speech Review, The Vocal Athlete and The Voice Teacher's Cookbook. Learn more at drdavidharrismusic.org.

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Christoph Bull is the university organist and organ professor at UCLA as well as organist-in-residence at First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, where he regularly plays one of the largest pipe organs in the world. He has concertized and recorded internationally, with venues including Salzburg Cathedral, Taipei National Concert Hall, Shanghai Conservatory of Music, the Shumei Temple in Misono (Japan), Teatro de Las Ruinas in El Salvador, the Catholic Cathedrals in Moscow (Russia) and Saint-Denis (France), Frederiksborg Castle in Denmark, Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa, Cathedral of Our Lady and Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, as well as rock clubs like The Viper Room, The Roxy and The Whisky, and many more. He's performed for national and regional conventions of the American Guild of Organists and the Organ Historical Society. His music has been broadcast on KCRW, Classical KUSC and the Minnesota Public Radio program, Pipedreams.

Among others, he has recorded, filmed and consulted for the movies Transformers: The Last Knight, Ghostbusters, Minority Report, and the TV Shows The Crazy Ones and How to Build... Everything. In addition to his work as a concert organist, he's also a pianist, composer, singer-songwriter and producer. His recording projects include the educational series Singlish and the first full-length album featuring the Glatter-Götz/Rosales pipe organ at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, First & Grand.

He's also been a speaker for TEDxUCLA and the L.A. Philharmonic's Upbeat Live on numerous occasions. His organ teachers in repertoire and improvisation were, in chronological order, Hermann Schaeffer, Renate Zimmermann, Christoph Schoener, Ludwig Doerr, Samuel Swartz, Cherry Rhodes, Ladd Thomas and Paul Jordan. He also studied in master courses with Marie-Claire Alain, Guy Bovet, Rudi Lutz and Craig Cramer.

 

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