Changing Light
Performed by Jennifer Gliere (Soprano), Leah Asher (Violin)
The festival concludes with Kaija Saariaho’s Changing Light. Saariaho, who passed away in 2023, was herself an exemplar of the migratory composer: born in Helsinki, she studied at the Sibelius Academy, then in Freiburg and Darmstadt, and in 1982 at IRCAM in Paris, which she made her permanent home. Her 2002 work for violin and voice sets a text by Rabbi Jules Harlow, ending the festival’s fifth season on a message of hope and renewal — delivered by soprano Jennifer Gliere, a direct descendant of Reinhold Glière, composer and founder of the Kyiv Conservatory (today the National Music Academy of Ukraine).