I need nothing. I feel nothing. I desire nothing.

An important new work from composer Lansing McLoskey.

Based on Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka's  Twelve Canticles for the Zealot - a strangely beautiful and terrifying look into the minds of fanatics - Lansing's Zealot Canticles is a concert-length choral 'oratorio' for clarinet, string quartet, and choir. Soyinka's texts and Lansing's responses are universal pleas for peace and tolerance, yet they force us to look into the mirror and recognize the thin line between devotion and intolerance, zealotry and radicalism. A major work on themes that dominate our public discourse every day.
Concert
Sunday, March 19 @ 4pm
The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill
8855 Germantown Ave.
Philadelphia, PA 19118
Zealot Chronicles
reflections on the project from Donald
We've started a series of  brief reflections on the work and process of presenting the world premiere of Lansing McLoskey's Zealot Canticles . You can follow them here, or click the titles below to read current entries.
In April 2011 I had the idea of a piece based on the writings of Wole Soyinka, the Nobel laureate (Literature, 1986) whose eloquent writings on his experiences as a political prisoner and, more recently, staring into the face of Boko Haram in his home Nigeria, I found truly moving...

Wole Soyinka (b. 1934) is a Nigerian poet, playwright, novelist, and recipient of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1967 Soyinka was arrested and imprisoned for ''civil defiance.'' His crimes? Denouncing the suppression of human rights and free speech by the military dictatorship of General Yakubu Gowon, intervening in an attempt to avoid the Nigerian/Biafran civil war, and condemning the genocide of the Igbo people...

As he assembled the libretto for  Zealot Canticles , the task before Lansing was enormous. We asked him to focus on the writing of Wole Soyinka, of which there are volumes of great variety.  His many plays in English are undoubtedly what led to his Nobel, but it is the very personal poems, canticles, lectures, and essays addressing oppression, political imprisonment, and the effect of zealotry on the individual and the community that is our focus...
Stay Connected