Performance: Ceremony of the Steps by Jace Clayton featuring the Boston Choral Ensemble

Ceremony of the Steps, a performance piece by artist Jace Clayton, highlights two ways in which people join voices and come together – in celebration and in protest. On May 18, the Boston Choral Ensemble, under the direction of Dr. Katherine Chan, will perform a selection of their regular standards as well as a new arrangement composed by Clayton in partnership with the chorus. Through its melding of harmony and incessant repetition, Ceremony of the Steps features both a capella song and ambient loops of electronically-altered voices that blend the structure of choral compositions with the recurring chants for social change.

This performance will occur at MassArt Art Museum in the Stephen D. Paine Gallery, currently featuring the exhibition Jace Clayton: They Are Part. Free. Advance registration required.

Performer Bio: 

Boston Choral Ensemble offers engaging musical performances that push the boundaries of what a choral concert looks like. The Ensemble performs compelling, musically-challenging repertoire in new contexts, untraditional locations, and in innovative ways. Concerts encourage audience interaction and create a lively conversation between musical pieces from different eras and backgrounds.

Members are passionate about choral music because it creates community between singers and between the choir and its audience members, if it is done in the spirit of inclusion and harmony. To that end, BCE focuses on exploring and promoting an increasingly diverse range of choral music, on supporting new artists and composers whose work links this ancient art form with modern concerns and values, and on lowering the barriers to participation for our audiences.