Voices of Ascension Presents Voices of Mannahatta on April 8

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Katlyn Morahan | Morahan Arts and Media
katlyn@morahanartsandmedia.com | 646-378-9386

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Voices of Ascension Presents Voices of Mannahatta 
at Church of the Ascension on April 8

Featuring International Contemporary Ensemble & Eagle Project in
Works by Raven Chacon and Andrew Balfour, Plus a US Premiere by
Cris Derkson and a World Premiere by Danielle Jagelski

“richly colored, impressive, and beautifully balanced” - Wall Street Journal

www.voicesofascension.org 

February 13, 2025 (New York, NY) — Voices of Ascension, the New York City-based professional chorus dedicated to sharing the transformative power of choral music through performances, commissions, and community engagement, presents Voices of Mannahatta on Tuesday, April 8, 2025 at 7:30 p.m. at The Church of the Ascension. The program explores the history of the land on which the concert hall stands, on the unceded lands of the Munsee Lenape, Mannahatta Island.

“Our role in showcasing choral music as a powerful lens for exploring the human experience has never been more vital,” said Executive Director of Voices of Ascension, Jonathan Bradley. “As Voices of Ascension celebrates 35 years,this concert continues our long-standing commitment to commissioning and premiering new choral works by female composers. We are honored to collaborate with the brilliant Danielle Jagelski, an extraordinary roster of Native American artists, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Raven Chacon, and the esteemed International Contemporary Ensemble for this groundbreaking event—one that not only honors our legacy but also ushers in an exciting new chapter in our history.”

In collaboration with Eagle Project - NYC's only Lenape-led performing arts organization - this concert features the multimedia world premiere of Holy Ground by composer and guest Artistic Director Danielle Olana Jagelski (Oneida/Ojibwe). Written for five voices, with singers from the Mvskogee, Acoma Pueblo, Anishinaabe, and Taíno Nations, the work is accompanied by video imagery created by visual artist Sage Ahebah Addington, a Diné artist from Breadsprings, New Mexico (Dinetah) whose work focuses on cultural dissonance, material, and personal history. 

“Holy Ground is a piece written for the land on Fifth Avenue between 10th and 11th Streets on Mannahatta in Sapokanikan; right near Kintecoying in Lenapehoking; Nimaamaa-aki just like everywhere else,” Jagelski said. “It is also written to be sung with that land, in the acoustic conditions of the building currently standing there - the Church of the Ascension. This piece, written for 5 voices and percussion, is an effort to listen to this little plot of land - what she has to say to those who inhabit it, and what we have to say to her?”

Through Holy Ground, Jagelski encourages the questions:

“What happens if we sing with the land, rather than to her?
What will happen if we stop excavating, but instead start listening?
What will happen if, rather than extracting, we nourish?
What if while learning, we un-learn too?

What does she have to teach us?

Do you think that we are the ones who made this ground holy?"

Alongside traditional Lenape song devised and performed by Eagle Project’s Founder and Artistic Director Opalanietet Pierce specifically for this concert, and choral music written by contemporary North American Indigenous composers, the program also includes performances of Andrew Balfour's Vision Chant, the US premiere of Juno Award-winning composer Cris Dersen’s Triumph of the Euro-Christ, and Raven Chacon's Pulitzer Prize-winning composition Voiceless Mass featuring International Contemporary Ensemble. 

Premiered in 2021, Voiceless Mass was composed specifically for the Nichols & Simpson organ at The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but is designed to be performed in any space of worship with high ceilings and pipe organ - in this case, the Church of Ascension’s Manton Memorial Organ. Chacon describes that his work “considers the spaces in which we gather, the history of access of these spaces, and the land upon which these buildings sit.”

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Concert Information
Voices of Manahatta
Tuesday, April 8, 2025 at 7:30 p.m.
Church of the Ascension | 36 Fifth Avenue at 10th St. | New York, NY 10011
Tickets: $10 - $50
Link: https://www.voicesofascension.org/mannahatta25 

Program:
Danielle Olana Jagelski - Holy Ground (visual imagery by Sage Ahebah Addington) *World Premiere
Raven Chacon - Voiceless Mass
Andrew Balfour - Vision Chant 
Cris Derksen - Triumph of the Euro-Christ *US Premiere

Artists:
The International Contemporary Ensemble
Eagle Project
Danielle Jagelski, Artistic Director and Conductor
Hai-Ting Chinn, Curator, Voices of The New
Sage Ahebah Addington, Projection Designer

Danielle Jagelski’s participation as composer and Voices of Ascension’s first female conductor is supported in part by the Judy Cope Memorial Fund for Women in Music.

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About Danielle Jagelski
Danielle Jagelski is a conductor, composer, and creative producer. She is the Artistic Director and Co-founder of Renegade Opera, Producer for First Nations Performing Arts, and faculty at Manhattan School of Music-Precollege Division.

“Danielle Jagelski is a prime example of socially responsive artistry in the 21st century.” - I Care If You Listen (2023)

Her work has been performed at distinguished music spaces including Performance Space New York, Roulette Intermedium, Green Room 42, and The National Gallery of Art. Recent commissions and collaborations have been with Boston Opera Collaborative, Voices of Ascension/Voices of the New, New Native Theatre, Timothy Long and the North American Indigenous Songbook, Colleen Bernstein- Percussionist, MUSE Cincinnati Women's Choir, Hear Us Hear Them, and the Sister Singers Network.

As a conductor, Danielle is sought out for her execution of contemporary works. Recent conducting engagements include NextGen3 with Beth Morrison Projects, Missing by Brian Current at Anchorage Opera, Scalia/Ginsberg at Opera Ithaca, Never to Return by Karen Sunabacka, Dark Sisters by Nico Muhly at Temple University, the world premiere of Adam’s Run by Ruby Fulton at Renegade Opera, and guest conductor for the Manhattan School of Music Symphony, and National Music Global Culture Society at Lincoln Center.

An enrolled citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin and Red Cliff Band of Ojibwe, Danielle often collaborates and performs with other Indigenous and Native American artists. As producer for First Nations Performing Arts, she is passionate about building kinship through interdisciplinary projects.

She is currently an Opera America IDEA grant recipient with librettist/playwright Rhiana Yazzie, for their new opera “Little Ones.” She has received grants from The Plimpton Foundation, Oregon Community Foundation, and Opera America, among others, she was a resident artist at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre- Groundfloor Residency.

About Raven Chacon
Raven Chacon is a composer, performer and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. As a solo artist, Chacon has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at LACMA, The Renaissance Society, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Borealis Festival, SITE Santa Fe, Chaco Canyon, Ende Tymes Festival, and Swiss Institute Contemporary Art New York. As a member of Postcommodity from 2009-2018, he co-created artworks presented at the Whitney Biennial, documenta 14, Carnegie International 57, as well as the two-mile long land art installation Repellent Fence.

A recording artist over the span of 24 years, Chacon has appeared on more than 80 releases on various national and international labels. In 2022, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his composition Voiceless Mass. His 2020 Manifest Destiny opera Sweet Land, co-composed with Du Yun, received critical acclaim from the LA Times, The New York Times, and The New Yorker, and was named 2021 Opera of the Year by the Music Critics Association of North America.

Since 2004, he has mentored over 300 high school Native composers in the writing of new string quartets for the Native American Composer Apprenticeship Project (NACAP). Chacon is the recipient of the United States Artists fellowship in Music, The Creative Capital award in Visual Arts, The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation artist fellowship, the American Academy’s Berlin Prize for Music Composition, the Bemis Center’s Ree Kaneko Award, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award (2022), the Pew Fellow-in-Residence (2022), and is a 2023 MacArthur Fellow.

His solo artworks are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum and National Museum of the American Indian, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Getty Research Institute, the University of New Mexico Art Museum, and various private collections.

About Eagle Project
Eagle Project is a New York-based Native American artistic laboratory utilizing theatre, music, dance, spoken word, and film to investigate and understand US American identity. We unpack the Native American Experience, both past and present, as the primary means to conduct our exploration.Eagle Project is an inter-tribal and multicultural performing arts company. Our mission is to develop and stage the works of Native American playwrights and theatre artists and to provide educational outreach on Native American culture to audiences throughout Turtle Island.

About International Contemporary Ensemble
Now in its third decade, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) is a multidisciplinary collective of musicians, digital media artists, producers, and educators committed to building and innovating collaborative environments in order to inspire audiences to reimagine how they experience contemporary music and sound. The Ensemble creates a mosaic musical ecosystem as “America’s foremost new-music group” (The New Yorker), honoring the diversity of human experience and expression by commissioning, developing, recording, and performing the works of living artists in “a mission worth following” (I Care If You Listen). 

Co-founded in 2001 by flutist and MacArthur “genius” Fellow Claire Chase, the Ensemble has premiered over 1,000 works and is the recipient of the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, as well as Musical America’s Ensemble of the Year Award. Past artistic leadership includes co-founder Claire Chase and Ensemble members Joshua Rubin, Rebekah Heller, and Ross Karre. Notable presenting partners have included Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, TIME:SPANS Festival, Roulette, and Miller Theatre. The Ensemble has given performances at Warsaw Autumn, Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music, Cité de la Musique (Paris), Park Avenue Armory, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Ojai Music Festival, and Big Ears Festival as well as in venues such as the Dutch National Opera, Carnegie Hall, and Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Through trailblazing initiatives such as the Call for ____ Commission Program and Ensemble Evolution (in partnership with The New School’s College of Performing Arts), the Ensemble has had a major impact on the contemporary performance ecosystem in New York City, nationally, and internationally, by supporting the creativity of their composer-collaborators, as well as presenting workshops and performances for hundreds of student composers. Many of the Ensemble’s composer-collaborators have developed highly influential careers, such as Du Yun, who won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for the opera Angel’s Bone, which the Ensemble developed and premiered, and MacArthur Fellows Tyshawn Sorey and Courtney Bryan. 

The Ensemble’s Digitice platform provides high-quality video documentation for artist-collaborators, as well as public access to an archive of composers’ workshops and performances. In addition, the Ensemble continues to build space for dialogue on equity, and has facilitated New Music Virtual Town Hall meetings for peer organizations and individual musicians to share resources, processes, and initiatives around equity and inclusion.

Yamaha Artist Services New York is the exclusive piano provider for the Ensemble. Read more at www.iceorg.org 

About Voices of Ascension Chorus and Orchestra
Voices of Ascension is one of New York City’s premier professional choral ensembles, dedicated to presenting masterworks for chorus and orchestra at the highest artistic level. Founded in 1990 by Artistic Director Dennis Keene, Voices has built an international reputation for its exquisite choral artistry, innovative programming, and commitment to expanding the choral canon.

Performances by the Grammy-nominated ensemble have been praised as “richly colored, impressive, and beautifully balanced” (Wall Street Journal) and “inspired” (The New York Times). The ensemble’s landmark Duruflé Festival, the first-ever complete retrospective of the composer’s works, established Voices as a leader in presenting comprehensive explorations of major choral composers. Since then, Voices of Ascension has continued to champion both historical and contemporary repertoire, with a special commitment to new music, including commissions and premieres—particularly by female composers—in partnership with the Sorel Organization.

Throughout its 35-year history, Voices of Ascension has produced an acclaimed annual concert series, released multiple Grammy-nominated recordings, and engaged in artistic collaborations with the San Francisco Symphony, Mostly Mozart Festival, José Limón Dance, the Mark Morris Dance Group, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and others. The ensemble has also been a longtime partner of The Church of the Ascension, home to the Manton Memorial Organ, the only French-built organ in the United States and a direct link to Voices’ deep engagement with French sacred music traditions.

The organization plays an important role in mentoring emerging artists through its Voices of Promise program, which has supported over 50 young professional vocal soloists, and in creating community connections through Voices of Experience, an initiative bringing choral music to NYC’s senior centers.

About Founding Artistic Director and Conductor Dennis Keene
Dennis Keene is Artistic Director and Conductor of the Voices of Ascension. Known internationally through his many concerts and recordings with Voices of Ascension as well as his regular guest appearances as conductor and teacher, he is one of the leading choral conductors in the world today.

Recognized early as an exceptional organist, Dennis Keene studied at The Juilliard School, where he earned the BM, MM, and DMA degrees and the coveted Gaston Dethier Organ Prize as a student of Vernon de Tar. Dr. Keene also studied privately in Paris with Marie-Madeleine Duruflé, André Marchal, and André Isoir.

In addition to his work with Voices of Ascension, Dr. Keene continues as Organist and Choirmaster of Church of the Ascension in New York City. He served for many years on the Board of Directors of Chorus America, the national service organization for the choral field, which honored him with the first Louis Botto Award for “innovative action and entrepreneurial zeal in developing a professional ensemble of exceptional artistic quality.” He has also served on the Choral Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts and on the Music Panel of the New York State Council on the Arts.

From 1998 to 2003 Maestro Keene presented a major summer institute for the training of conductors and singers: The Dennis Keene Choral Festival, in Kent, Connecticut. In 1993 he began his recording association with Delos International, with which he has recorded such best-selling CD’s as Beyond Chant, the Duruflé Album, and the Berlioz Te Deum. This series of highly acclaimed recordings with Voices of Ascension has secured international recognition for both conductor and chorus and become the standard for first-ranked ensembles worldwide.

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