The Transfiguration Ensemble will mark Good Friday with Joseph Haydn’s deeply emotional string quartet version of The Seven Last Words of Christ, op. 51 nos. 1–7, with reflections by seven wide-ranging scholars and writers selected by Sam Haselby (PhD, Columbia University; current member of the Harvard Society of Fellows). The evening will also feature an original video work by the Canadian artist John Gurrin.
In 1785, Joseph Haydn received a commission to write instrumental music for a Good Friday service in a cavern converted into a subterranean oratory by a wealthy Spanish cleric. From Haydn’s own description of the event, it had the elements of a multi-media performance. Transported to Brooklyn, New York more than 200 years later, the atmosphere of the work’s premiere will be evoked by John Gurrin’s video art coupled with the austere beauty of the Sanctum at the Great American Can Factory. While the original Good Friday service featured sermons about each of Christ’s last words before each related movement of Haydn’s piece, this performance honors the spoken word through the perspectives of scholars from diverse backgrounds and fields including American history, classical philosophy and Middle Eastern studies. By removing Haydn’s work from its religious context, these scholars will highlight the universal message behind the seven last words of Christ.
The Transfiguration Ensemble is Song-a Cho and Naho Tsutsui, violins; Stephanie Griffin, viola; and Joanne Lin, cello. Among the speakers are Sam Haselby, Evan Haefeli, Tamer el-Leithy and Jennifer Griffin.
An ardent performer and a founder of the Transfiguration Ensemble, violinist Song-A Cho is a winner of the Guderyahn String Competition and has toured extensively in the United States, Europe, and Asia as a soloist and chamber musician. She has held concertmaster positions in the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, New York String Orchestra, Bach Aria Festival Orchestra, and the Juilliard Orchestra. She is currently concertmaster of the Peconic Chamber Orchestra and a member of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra in Connecticut.
Japanese violinist, Naho Tsutsui has given numerous solo and chamber music recitals in the United States, Japan, Germany and Bulgaria. Her live performances have been broadcasted internationally and she was a featured recitalist on Bulgarian National Television in 2003. She is a member of the Hyperion String Quartet based in Saratoga Springs, NY and serves as violin faculty at the Bloomingdale School of Music in New York City and the Kinhaven Music School in Vermont.
Canadian violist Stephanie Griffin performs regularly as a soloist and with a wide range of ensembles, including the Argento Chamber Ensemble, Continuum, the Momenta Quartet, the conductorless String Orchestra of New York City (SONYC) and the avant-jazz band Floriculture. For the past ten years, she has made annual visits to Indonesia to collaborate with the composer Tony Prabowo.
Joanne Lin, cellist, is an avid chamber musician, performing with the Momenta Quartet in the New York metro area and the conductorless New Century Chamber Orchestra in her native San Francisco Bay Area, along with Transfiguration. As a proponent of new music, she helped to found the Argento Chamber Ensemble, plays with such groups as the Wet Ink Ensemble and New York New Music Ensemble, and is a regular cellist for composers’ groups such as the Long Island Composers’ Alliance and League of Composers/ISCM.
John Gurrin is a filmmaker, photographer, and sound designer. His projections were recently shown in Singapore and Jakarta and he has exhibited video and computer work in New York, Toronto, Montreal, Columbia and Venice. He teaches at New York University’s Kanbar Institute of Film and Television.
Sam Haselby graduated from Columbia University with a Masters in Philosophy and a PhD in American History. His particular area of expertise is the origin of American religious nationalism. Dr. Haselby has taught at Columbia University and the New School, and has been in residence at the New York Historical Society. He is currently a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows.
Jennifer Griffin graduated from Queen’s University, Canada and King’s College London, UK where she specialised in Ancient Greek Philosophy and 20th Century Phenomenology and Hermeneutics. She followed her academic career with a career in public broadcasting, having trained and worked as a television producer with the BBC and Channel Four in London, specialising in comedy and documentary. She is currently Executive Producer, Comedy Development for RTE Television in Dublin, Ireland.