ARCHIVE OF PAST SEASONS
BOSTON's PROFESSIONAL CHORAL ENSEMBLE PERFORMING MUSIC OF WOMEN COMPOSERS FROM THE 9th CENTURY TO THE PRESENT DAY
BOSTON's PROFESSIONAL CHORAL ENSEMBLE PERFORMING MUSIC OF WOMEN COMPOSERS FROM THE 9th CENTURY TO THE PRESENT DAY
BOSTON's PROFESSIONAL CHORAL ENSEMBLE PERFORMING MUSIC OF WOMEN COMPOSERS FROM THE 9th CENTURY TO THE PRESENT DAY
BOSTON's PROFESSIONAL CHORAL ENSEMBLE PERFORMING MUSIC OF WOMEN COMPOSERS FROM THE 9th CENTURY TO THE PRESENT DAY
BOSTON's PROFESSIONAL CHORAL ENSEMBLE PERFORMING MUSIC OF WOMEN COMPOSERS FROM THE 9th CENTURY TO THE PRESENT DAY
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Cappella Clausura's 2026-2027 Concert Season
In Her Own Words
Music of Poetry, Poetry of Music
Saturday October 24, 4 PM
Emmanuel Church, Boston
Sunday October 25, 4 PM
Grace Episcopal Church, Newton
Language, speech, and vocabulary - these are among the fundamental building blocks of any music written for the voice. In this performance, Cappella will celebrate the multitude of women authors and the amazing music that their works have inspired. Each author spins syllables, turns-of-phrase, and profound meanings to create her own kind of music with its own rhyme and rhythm. And women composers respond to this music with their own, like annotations in the margins that show how the text speaks to them.
The concert will include pieces by Gitta Steiner, Hildegard, Rhona Clarke, Rhian Samuel, and Cappella Clausura’s own founding director, Amelia LeClair.
Magnificat for a Rose
Christmas with Cappella Clausura
Saturday, December 12, 6 PM
Grace Episcopal Church, Newton
Sunday, December 13, 5 PM
All Saints Ashmont, Dorchester
“The rose is without why; it blooms because it blooms. It doesn’t draw attention to itself; nor does it ask whether anybody sees it.” -Angelus Silesius, 1657
“She has scattered the proud in their conceit. She has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the humble.” -Marian Hymn, taken from the Gospel of Luke
The symbolism and quiet humility of the rose, and the radical words that the Virgin Mary speaks: each of these images evoke a different facet of divine womanhood in the Christmas story. And these seemingly contradictory qualities - patience and tenacity, peacefulness and righteousness - coexist in all of us, women or not. In this intimate Christmas concert, Cappella Clausura presents music for the longest nights of the year, which requires us to call on both of those feelings to make it through the darkness.
The concert will include pieces by Erna Woll, Rebecca Clarke, Sulpitia Cesis, and Yshani Perinpanayagam.
Fire and Ice
New compositions inspired by Vittoria Aleotti
Saturday, April 10, 4 PM
Emmanuel Church, Boston
Sunday, April 11, 4 PM
Grace Episcopal Church, Newton
After an incredibly successful first composition competition last season, Cappella Clausura returns with “Fire and Ice”, a concert that will feature five new compositions from new and upcoming young composers. The new compositions will be featured surrounded by the passionate madrigals of Vittoria Alleotti. Aleotti was a prodigious talent, and her compositional style is unique even among her contemporaries; her madrigals will inspire our commissioned composers with their drama and beauty.
Macrocosmos
Female visionaries of music and art
Saturday, May 8, 4 PM
Emmanuel Church, Boston
Sunday, May 9, 4 PM
Grace Episcopal Church, Newton
“The woods were in quiet mood, dreamy and sweet. No great contrasts of light and dark but full of quiet flowing light and fresh from the recent rain, and the growth full, steady and ascending.”
“…There is something additional, a breath that draws your breath into its breathing, a heartbeat that pounds on yours, a recognition of the oneness of all things.” -Emily Carr
Cappella Clausura takes inspiration from the sublime as represented in artwork made by women, and explores those women's perspective on the world we live in – on the grandest and smallest scales. On one hand, we have Hildegard’s sublime and dramatic paintings of her religious visions of the earth and the cosmos, reflected in her equally visionary music. On the other, we have the sublimity of the tiniest, fragile phenomena of nature represented in Emily Carr’s paintings. This fragility is reflected in Tawnie Olson’s musical setting of Carr’s journals.
This concert features Tawnie Olson’s “Beloved of the Sky”, alongside works by Hildegard, Hilary Tann, and Evelin Seppar, among others.