An ‘extraordinary work’ is how renowned conductor and musicologist James Wood has described Amao Omi for choir and saxophones by the Georgian composer Gija Kancheli (b. 1935). The work will feature in the forthcoming concerts by Chamber Choir Ireland and Chatham Saxophone Quartet which run from 21 to 31 October on a five-date Music Network tour.

Written in 2005 for the Netherlands Chamber Choir, the work’s ‘hypnotic and overwhelmingly peaceful message and character’, says Wood, ‘could well amount to an ecstatic hymn to the Virgin and a prayer for peace.’

The text is made up of disconnected Georgian words, which Kancheli is said to have chosen for their sound rather than for their meaning. The work’s title, Amao Omi, means literally ‘Vain Warfare’.

The Kancheli work concludes a programme that also includes Ockeghem, Avo Pärt, Britten, Gesualdo, Obrecht, J.H. Schein and Bruckner. The concerts will be conducted by Wood.

James Wood is an authority on Gesualdo and in 2013 was awarded the prestigious ECHO Klassik Prize for his reconstruction and recording of Gesualdo’s sacred music. Chamber Choir Ireland will perform Gesualdo’s Ave sanctissima Maria from the second book of Sacrae Cantiones (1603).

According to Wood,

The tragic circumstances of Gesualdo’s early life, which led to the well-documented murder of his first wife and her lover, have tended to deflect attention away from Gesualdo’s genius as a composer towards the psychological state of this highly complex human being. However it seems hard to deny that the turbulent events of Gesualdo’s early life contributed enormously to the intensity of expression in all his later music.  

The first concert in the tour takes place in St Peter’s Church, Drogheda, on Friday 21 October, and Chamber Choir Ireland, Chatham Saxophone Quartet and Wood will then visit Limerick (22nd), Belfast (29th), Dublin (30th) and Wexford (31st).

For full details, visit https://goo.gl/Be8tlG