The Philadelphia Singers

by Peter Burwasser

classical

In a world bedeviled by cultural and racial barriers and prejudices, people find little ways to fight back. It might be something as simple, and sublime, as a falafel shop co-owned by a Muslim and a Jew. Artists have an especially uncanny impulse to defuse zealotry. Last month, Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble came to town, displaying a marvelous cornucopia of musical traditions and creating a rich harmony that transcended the individual voices. Those who saw filmmaker Daniel Anker's deeply affectionate portrait of Philadelphia Orchestra musicians, Music From the Inside Out, will recall the work of Israeli-born cellist Udi Bar David, who has engaged Arab musicians in an extraordinary cross-cultural enterprise. Udi Bar David will be on hand in a pre-concert lecture Sunday to introduce a significant new work by the composer Thomas Whitman, "Babylon," a choral setting of Psalm 137 depicting the violent Babylonian exile of the Jewish population of Jerusalem. Historical Babylon existed in an area that straddles modern day Iraq and Iran. Obviously, the implications for the politics of our time are less than subtle. Whatever your religious convictions, the Old Testament reveals a continuity of the human condition that is profoundly disturbing, for better and for worse. Whitman and his librettist and Swarthmore colleague Nathalie Anderson do not shrink from the savagery of these truths in their musical depictions. This Philadelphia Singers concert, to be led by music director David Hayes, will also include the music of Handel and Schubert.

Sun., May 8, 7:30 p.m., $28-$48, Irvine Auditorium, 34th and Spruce sts., 215-751-9494.