Tickets

Saturday, May 17, 2025 • 7:30 pm

Sanders Theatre
45 Quincy St., Cambridge 02138
Free Parking  for concert attendees in the Felton Street Garage

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Giacomo CARISSIMI: Jephte
Kile SMITH: The Waking Sun

Hailed as ‘a knockout’ by the  Philadelphia Inquirer, Kile Smith's  The Waking Sun  opens a window into that "otherness" waiting patiently for each of us while we tend to our daily existence. It's an ancient philosophy for the modern age.

In 2011  The Crossing commissioned Kile Smith to write a new work as part of their Seneca Project. Kile Smith explains his work: 

The Waking Sun is my attempt to understand Stoicism. When Donald Nally invited me to join The Crossing’s Seneca Project, I hesitated. As a Christian, I wondered if it was presumptuous to engage deeply with Seneca the Younger, just as I have questioned why a non-Christian might set Christian texts. But as I read his work, I was drawn in. His writing—often preaching—carries a nobility that transcends belief. While some have noted parallels between Stoicism and Christianity, I wasn’t interested in those echoes. I wanted to find Seneca himself, to understand Stoicism on its own terms.

Donald gave me the key when he described a recurring dream of trudging through a blinding snowstorm—lost, but moving forward. That image became mine, shaping how I approached Seneca’s thought. I turned to his plays, especially the choruses, where his voice felt most immediate. With guidance from classics scholar Shadi Bartsch, I refined my selections to six passages that, to me, embody Stoicism’s essence. The final two sections hint at what I consider to be Seneca’s “answer” to our condition (although he’d shrink from such a word, I’m sure): Take full responsibility without fear, be motivated by love. This is how I read it.

Music, however, teaches nothing, answers nothing. If there is any value in The Waking Sun, it will come from the window opened into that otherness waiting patiently for each of us while we bother with our daily existence. Seneca is this particular window. I’ve tried to peek through and sing what I saw.

Carissimi's Jephte: A Masterpiece of Baroque drama

A father makes a promise he cannot break. A daughter meets her fate with grace. Where divine intervention fails, raw human emotion delivers.

Carissimi’sJephte is one of the most powerful oratorios of the Baroque era. It tells the tragic story of Jephte, who vows to sacrifice the first thing he sees upon his return home after a victory. When that first sight is his beloved daughter, fate is sealed. In the Baroque tradition, Carissimi captures the heartache of the story with deeply emotional recitatives, short arias, and dynamic choruses. Carissimi’s mastery of storytelling through music ensures that, centuries later, Jephtestill stirs the soul.