THE ESOTERICS is now celebrating SEASON 32! Thank you for all of your support!
The Esoterics is a Seattle-based nonprofit vocal ensemble dedicated to performing
contemporary a cappella music from around the world.
The Esoterics acknowledges that we are on the traditional land of the first people of Seattle, the Duwamish People, past and present, and honor with gratitude the land itself and the Duwamish Tribe.
The Esoterics also recognizes that white supremacy, racism, homophobia, and transphobia must come to an end, and we support efforts to reform policy to ensure a safe and equal existence for all Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC), as well as for our entire LGBTQIA+ community. We are committed to providing a safe place for ALL people to connect, reflect, and heal.
Saturday | 11 Oct 2025 | 8:00pm
Plymouth United Church of Christ
1217 6th Avenue | Seattle
Sunday | 12 Oct 2025 | 7:00pm
Christ Episcopal Church
310 North K Street | Tacoma
This autumn, The Esoterics invites you to find courage and hope in dark times, connect with nature and our community, and reflect in a concert series with the choral music of Juhi Bansal. An Indian composer who was brought up in Hong Kong and now lives in Los Angeles, Juhi creates works that draw subtly upon each of these traditions (as well as those from around the world) and entwines them intricately with gestures from western classical music. Her music incorporates themes of cultural diversity, nature and the environment, strong feminine energy, and the immigrant experience.
Also an accomplished conductor and accompanist, Juhi has been awarded fellowships by the Douglas Moore Fund for American Opera, the Atlantic Music Center, the Seasons Music Festival, the Oregon Bach Festival, and the Pacific Music Festival, where she has premiered the work of other composers from the podium or at the piano. We are excited that Juhi will be joining us in Seattle and Tacoma to hear us perform and discuss these themes with the audience.
Our concert will begin with Bansal's setting of a poem by Khalil Gibran, Fear (becoming ocean). In Gibran’s text, the personified river trembles with fear as it approaches the vast ocean. Beneath a duet of Hindustani-style soprano soloists, the chorus assumes the role of the water and embraces the inevitable - not disappearing, but transforming - to abandon its individual identity and become part of a larger whole, the ocean. Change is prefaced by hesitation about the unknown, and requires great hope and courage.
Inspired by images from Inuit legend, Bansal’s Aurora employs kulning - a singing style of ancient Scandinavian shepherds - to evoke the landscape of the frosty north. Setting a text of her own, Juhi refers to the spirits of the heavens, who dance and play as they lead us with colorful torches on our way.
Bansal’s In perfect light sets verses from The old astronomer by the poet Sarah Williams. This text is a short study of contrasts - rising and setting, light and darkness, love and fear - and is set in a homophonic, hymn-like style. In the final moments of this work, the glowing descant of a soprano solo over the chorus embodies the steadfast certainty of a star.
The Esoterics will be joined by our percussionist friend James Doyle to present Bansal's Language of the earth. This theatrical work grew from conversions between Juhi and Trevor Shaw, the director of Inversion, the ensemble that commissioned the piece. In three movements - War, Storm, and Echoes - Bansal employs extended vocal and choral techniques to pose the question: what would the earth say? If it had a voice that we could hear, how would the world respond to our exploitation, our carelessness, our destruction? How would it remind us that humanity’s relationship to the natural world is inextricable? How would it warn us of the consequences? How would the earth give us hope and inspire us to change?
For Absence, Bansal translated a Moorish text by the 12th-century Andalusian philosopher Abu Bakr al-Turtushi into English. Over his lifetime, Al-Tartushi was able to travel a vast distance: from Spain, across North Africa, and through the Middle East, as far as Baghdad. Wanderlust is matched only by wistfulness in his poem, for as Al-Tartushi travels, he searches in every corner for a trace of his beloved - a scent, a sign, a shared star.
The Esoterics will close FERVOR & FLIGHT with We came searching for a home, a brand-new five-movement work commissioned by The Thirteen, a professional ensemble in Washington DC. In her choice of texts from the Ellis Island and Angel Island Archives - as well as fragments by Chief Standing Bear, Khalil Gibran, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth - Juhi sought elements that are common to the various stories of immigration to this country. She included accounts of terrifying journeys to the New World, speeches from First Nations people, as well as poems and graffiti from the walls of detention centers, ending her cycle with Emma Lazarus’ The new Colossus, the poem that is engraved at the base of the Statue of Liberty.
There is one dramatic detail about We came searching for a home that must be noted. While Juhi was in the final stages of this composition, she was forced to flee her home in Los Angeles. The Palisades Fire destroyed her entire home, and nearly all of her worldly possessions, including the first version of this score, still in manuscript. In the following weeks, while searching for her own home, Juhi recreated this entire score from memory in order to meet her commission deadline, which was earlier this year.
We are thrilled to welcome Juhi to Seattle and Tacoma for the weekend of these concerts! Please join The Esoterics for this exploration of hope and healing, trial and transformation!
CONCERT REPERTOIRE:
[All of the music in this program was composed by Juhi Bansal.]
Absence (2018)
Aurora (2022)
Fear (becoming ocean) (2023)
In perfect light (2019)
Language of the earth (2024)
We came searching for a home (2025)
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