The first half of this concert will conclude with the five movements of Bodin’s Bizarre bestiary, originally composed in 2014, but revised to its current form earlier this year. Setting five poems from the collection Les animaux de personne by Jacques Roubaud, Philippe composed individual movements entitled: La gerboise (The jerboa, a small desert rodent related to the gerbil), Le lièvre variable (The mountain hare, which changes its color in each of the seasons), Le couscous tacheté (The spotted cuscus, a tree-dwelling marsupial native to the rainforests of Micronesia), Le dugong (The sea-cow, a large, shy marine mammal with flippers and a whale-like tail, a cousin of the manatee), and Le mouton à grosses fesses (The fat-tailed sheep, a common breed of sheep with ample hind quarters, well adapted to surviving in the desert).

In Bodin’s bestiary, the composer plays with the poetic personification of each animal. The jerboa awakes to enjoy a succulent breakfast and grabs her bookbag before running out the door for school. The quivering hare sleeps with one eye open, chomps on the clover, leaps through the lettuce, and hides from the hunter, changing color - from silver to red, from brown to white – throughout the seasons. The red-eyed cuscus hooks his tail to a branch deep in the Indonesian rainforest and silently enjoys the low-hanging fruit while wiggling his haunches. The lazy sea-cow reclines at the bottom of Indian Ocean, munching on algae until he realizes that his food supply is gone, lets out a plaintive moan, and must move on to another locale. In Philippe’s final movement, the fat-tailed sheep suffers from a variety of setbacks, including questionable fashion choices, a sweltering office environment, falling off the wagon from his diet, and rejection by his love interest at the night club. This hilarious collection of poems is expertly and uniquely set by Bodin, and shouldn’t be missed!

In the second half of this concert, the three semi-choruses that performed in the first half will combine to present Leurs sauvages échos and Anges nus. In the first of these triple-chorus pieces, the title refers to the waves of the ocean, and the second refers to the motion of clouds in the sky. These pieces do not set a specific text, but rather, syllables in antiphony. Both of these works inspired by “environmental” phenomena were composed for the Choir of Radio-France, but were significantly revised since their original creation. The Esoterics is excited to bring these two world premieres to life!

For the finale of this performance, we will present Philippe’s Fleurs d’artifice. Winner of the International Choral Competition in Espoo, Finland in 2018, this piece sets a Latin poem by the composer that describes the fleeting arrival and departure of the Northern lights. For this piece, The Esoterics are so happy to welcome back cellist Willie Braun, who will accompany the ensemble with the dramatic leaps, soaring lines, and haunting harmonics of Bodin’s award-winning homage to the aurora borealis.