A Dream So Bright: Choral Music of Jake Runestad
$16.98
Available on July 26, 2024True Concord Voices & Orchestra
Eric Holtan, conductor
Jeffrey Biegel, piano
Early Pre-Order Availability in celebration of Earth Day
Founded in 2004, Tucson, Arizona-based TRUE CONCORD VOICES & ORCHESTRA made its New York City debut at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in September 2015 with Mozart’s Requiem and Stephen Paulus’s Prayers and Remembrances. That same year, True Concord debuted on the international stage with its first album on Reference Recordings®, Far in the Heavens: Choral Music of Stephen Paulus, which received a GRAMMY® nomination for Best Choral Performance, while the late Stephen Paulus won the GRAMMY® for Best Classical Contemporary Composition posthumously.
True Concord is committed to creating experiences through the performance of celebrated masterworks and music of today’s leading composers that move, enrich and inspire. Recent performances and premieres include Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and Mass in B Minor, Mozart’s Requiem and Mass in C Minor, Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem, Haydn’s The Creation, Jake Runestad’s Earth Symphony and Jocelyn Hagen’s Here I Am. Other commissions and premieres have involved Stephen Paulus, Gerald Near, Ola Gjeilo, Paul Crabtree, and Sheldon Curry. After the tragic death of our friend Stephen Paulus, True Concord launched the Stephen Paulus Emerging Composers Competition, an annual, national event held to honor Paulus’s legacy of nurturing young composers. During the pandemic, True Concord refused to go silent in spite of the huge challenges posed by COVID-19. It nimbly adapted, creating a safe “bubble” for artists, strict health protocols for audiences, and two concentrated seasons of live, outdoor and video-streamed concerts that reached long-standing devotees and new audiences across the globe — a feat recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts in its special report “The Art of Reopening: A Guide to Current Practices Among Arts Organizations During COVID-19.”
ERIC HOLTAN, Founding Music Director and Conductor of True Concord, launched his professional music career at age 12 as a church organist. A native of Minnesota, he studied organ, voice, and conducting at Gustavus Adolphus College, earning a Master of Music in Choral Conducting from the University of Iowa and the Doctor of Musical Arts in Choral and Orchestral Conducting from the University of Arizona. Holtan’s principal conducting teachers include Karle Erickson, William Hatcher, Bruce Chamberlain, and Thomas Cockrell, with additional studies with Donald Portnoy, Otto-Werner Mueller, Christoph Eschenbach, David Hayes, Duain Wolfe, Vance George, and Dale Warland. Eric is also Director of Music and Liturgical Arts at Dove of Peace Lutheran Church in Tucson.
JEFFREY BIEGEL’s career reflects an unprecedented journey creating the most diverse commissioning projects and recordings of his generation. In 2024, Biegel was the featured artist in the Naxos recording of Peter Boyer’s Rhapsody in Red, White & Blue with the London Symphony Orchestra — part of Biegel’s 50-state Rhapsody National Initiative. Recent premieres include Biegel’s Three Reflections: Freedom (JFK), Justice (RBG), Equality (MLK) for piano and orchestra, with orchestrations by Harrison Sheckler; Jim Stephenson’s Piano Concerto; Daniel Perttu’s A Planet’s Odyssey for piano and orchestra; and Farhad Poupel’s The Legend of Bijan and Manijeh for piano, orchestra, and chorus. In 2021, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra featured his Reflection of Justice: An Ode to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and in February 2025, Biegel will premiere Adolphus Hailstork’s new Piano Concerto with the Pacific Symphony, Carl St. Clair conducting.
Considered “one of the best of the younger American composers” (Chicago Tribune), EMMY®-winning and GRAMMY®-nominated composer and conductor JAKE RUNESTAD has received commissions and performances from leading ensembles and organizations such as Washington National Opera, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Pacific Symphony & Chorale, True Concord Voices & Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Choir, Philippine Madrigal Singers, Seraphic Fire, Santa Fe Desert Chorale, and many more. “The Hope of Loving” — the first album dedicated to Jake’s choral music and recorded by the American choir Conspirare, received a GRAMMY® nomination. In 2019, Jake became one of the youngest composers ever awarded the prestigious Raymond C. Brock commission by the American Choral Directors Association. “Earth Symphony,” Jake’s ground-breaking choral symphony written with librettist Todd Boss, earned a 2022 EMMY® Award for musical composition. Jake’s visceral music and charismatic personality have fostered a busy schedule of commissions, residencies, workshops, and conducting engagements, enabling him to share his passion for creativity, expressivity, and community with musicians around the world.
Extra notes
Recorded May 24-26, 2023 at Camelback Bible Church, Paradise Valley, Arizona, USA Music published by Jake Runestad Music, LLC (ASCAP)
On This Recording
- Dreams of the Fallen (25:44)
- Jeffrey Biegel, piano | Poetry by Brian Turner
Earth Symphony
Libretto by Todd Boss
- Earth Symphony: I. Evolution (4:22)
- Earth Symphony: II. Ambition (5:52)
- Earth Symphony: III. Destruction (6:32)
- Earth Symphony: IV. Lament (7:01)
- Earth Symphony: V. Recovery (8:24)