I Was a Stranger

The Great Bend 2025-26 season concludes with I Was a Stranger, a poignant program that reflects on mercy, grief, and the power of welcome. The journey begins with Samuel Barber’s Agnus Dei, a choral setting of his iconic Adagio for Strings, transforming its familiar ache into a sacred plea for peace and forgiveness. From this place of solemn reflection, Andrey Stolyarov’s Out of the Depths offers a cry for mercy drawn from Psalm 130—music born of personal loss, gradually unfolding from sorrow into a luminous expression of hope. The program culminates with John Muehleisen’s Borders, a sweeping, multicultural cantata commissioned by Great Bend for the Chorale’s 2019 Carnegie Hall debut. The American-prize winning work opens with a traditional Salish welcome and weaves together global folk melodies and poetry from Emma Lazarus, Brian Bilston, and Alberto Ríos. Borders offers a powerful meditation on hospitality, identity, and belonging. Together, these works create a moving narrative that invites us to see the stranger not as “other,” but as kin.

PROGRAM
Barber “Agnus Dei”
Stoylarov “Out of the Depths”
Muehleisen “Borders”

You may also like the following events from Great Bend Center for Music:

• Next Tuesday, 17th March, 06:30 pm, Great Bend Chorale - Spring 2026 Term in Shelton
• Next month, 26th April, 04:00 pm, Yankee Romantics: Voices of the Second Boston School in Shelton

Also check out other Health & Wellness events in Olympia, Arts events in Olympia, Literary Art events in Olympia.