Barnes to perform at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in New York City
calendar icon24 Oct 2023
Lincoln, Neb.--Glenn Korff School of Music Marguerite Scribante Professor of Piano Paul Barnes will perform at the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine on Tuesday, Dec. 12 at 7 p.m. in New York City.
The church, located near the original World Trade Center at 130 Liberty Street, was the only house of worship destroyed in the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Risen from the ashes of 9/11 and designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, the church recently reopened in 2022 after being rebuilt as both a church and a national shrine. It is located in Liberty Park, overlooking the National September 11 Memorial and Museum.
Barnes, pianist and Greek Orthodox chanter, will present a program titled “Celebrating the Incarnation” featuring piano works based on Byzantine and Jewish chant. He will be joined on the concert by Master Chanter and Pastoral Assistant Dimitrios Katsiklis and a quartet that includes Pauline Kim, violin, Conrad Harris, violin, Chieh-Fan Yiu, viola and Caleb van der Swaagh, cello. Ticket information is available at https://go.unl.edu/vwnz.
“We welcome Paul Barnes and the celebration of the incarnation at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine as one of the initial and most relevant musical events of the season,” Katsiklis said. “This event provides the opportunity to prepare for the holidays of Christmas through the inspiration of different musical genres. It is a pleasure for me to collaborate with Paul at the newly opened Shrine of marvelous architecture designed by Santiago Calatrava. This introduction of Byzantine Music in its original form to broader audiences of different cultures occurs during the daily services in the Shrine, and certainly with this unique opportunity of the Celebration of the Incarnation. The St. Nicholas Choir will perform ancient chants in Ancient Greek and in English that are part of the Nativity Services of Christmas, offering an echo from the depths of time to our contemporary Christmas spirit.”
The program includes J.A.C. Redford’s “Variations on the Incarnation” (New York premiere), Victoria Bond’s “Illuminations on Byzantine Chant,” and Philip Glass’s Piano Quintet “Annunciation.” Katsiklis and the Byzantine Choir of St. Nicholas will also perform traditional byzantine chant on the Nativity. Glass is scheduled to attend the concert.
It will be the 22nd live performance by Barnes of “Annunciation,” which originally premiered at the Lied Center for Performing Arts in 2018. The quintet is based on the Greek Orthodox communion hymn for the Feast of the Annunciation. It was commissioned by The Pearle Francis Finigan Foundation, Mike and Amber Kutayli, Rhonda Seacrest and the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts.
“It’s a stunningly beautiful piece,” Barnes said. “It was Glass’s first experience in musically interpreting Byzantine chant, and people are fascinated by this musical intersection of chant and chamber music. That’s why it has been so popular. Every time I play it, people are genuinely moved and filled with hope.”
In 2019, Barnes and the renowned string quartet Brooklyn Rider released a recording of the Annunciation quintet. That recording is now featured on the online video tour of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine, narrated by George Stephanopoulos, and viewable at https://go.unl.edu/stnicholasnyc.
“With George Stephanopoulos’s voice and such beautiful videography, the video is quite moving. I’m so grateful to have my recording as the background of this video describing this beautiful expression of love—and that’s what the church is—an expression of love in the midst of uttermost tragedy,” Barnes said. “After viewing the video, it seemed natural to try to schedule a live performance in that sacred space.“
Barnes had the opportunity to tour St. Nicholas last May when he performed in New York at Bond’s Cutting Edge concert series.
“I fell in love with the church and the beautiful way the iconography communicated such profound hope. Many of the traditional byzantine icons have images of first responders and other heroes from that tragic day.”
Barnes is looking forward to performing in the sacred space of St. Nicholas.
“One of the reasons that I became Orthodox thirty years ago was the Orthodox view of God and the world that embraced love and beauty in its most profound sense,” Barnes said. “Even in an Orthodox icon of the Crucifixion, a tragic, gruesome event, what you see is an absolutely elegant shape—tragedy and pain transfigured into joy and hope. That is a compelling world view that also relates to my teaching. I try to inspire my students to understand that music can be seen as an icon of love, and when we successfully launch music out into the universe in a performance, we’re preaching a gospel of beauty that gives people hope of a transcendent reality beyond this world.”
Barnes’ concert in New York is made possible with support from Margaret and Greg Sutton, Rhonda Seacrest, Mike and Amber Kutayli, Robert and Charlene Gondring, and St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine.
“That’s one of the greatest things about my experience in Lincoln is that if you’re a creative artist with compelling musical ideas, you will always find support here,” Barnes said. “And that has made my life so joyous because it’s allowed me to commission Philip Glass not once, but twice and do these incredible major works and recordings.”
Redford’s “Variations on the Incarnation” will also be featured on Barnes’ upcoming retrospective faculty recital in Lincoln on Jan. 31, 2024, with Redford in attendance. The work was commissioned by the faculty of the St. Constantine School in Houston, Texas, and was given its world premiere last July in Houston.
“Jack Redford is a wonderful composer who has had great success both in film and concert music. He wrote this beautiful piece for me based on a very famous Greek Orthodox Christmas hymn,” Barnes said. “January 31st is the 30th anniversary of my becoming Orthodox, and I would later discover also Philip Glass’s birthday—a total cosmic convergence that has shaped my professional life profoundly.”