VC LIVE | "A Year to the Day" World Premiere

Tune in on Friday, October 7 at 7 PM, VC will present the world premiere of the dramatic song cycle, with music by composer Lembit Beecher and lyrics by librettist/lyricist Mark Campbell

The world premiere of "A Year to the Day" will feature artists including tenor Nicholas Phan and violinist VC Artist Augustin Hadelich, as well as pianist Orion Weiss, and cellist Karen Ouzounian.

The hour-long work examines the life of a musical artist during the pandemic with virtuosic music, accompanied by poignant and witty text.

This is a piece about a singer’s relationship to music," composer Lembit Beecher explained. "Though the onset of the pandemic is the instigating narrative event of the song cycle, and though at the center of the work lies the question of what we do and who we become as performing artists when the act that defines so much of our lives, performing, is taken away, the cycle does not focus on the pandemic but rather on an artist’s complicated love of music.”

Librettist Mark Campbell was inspired to conceive the work as he saw his colleagues struggle through the darkest days of the pandemic. “I created the text for A Year to the Day to honor musicians and the challenges they face in their professions; challenges that became even more apparent during the pandemic," he said. "In the work’s six songs and five interludes, a concert and opera singer reviews his career, expresses his doubts about the future, and renews his love for the art that gives his life meaning.”

“As I rehearsed and recorded A Year to the Day, I recognized in Mark’s text and Lembit’s music many of the events, thoughts, and emotions that I experienced myself during the early days of the pandemic," Hadelich added. "It is an intensely moving piece. Even weeks after recording it, I can’t stop thinking about Lembit’s beautiful and heart-wrenching music!"