How To Go On with Guest Conductor Elizabeth Eschen Cacciola
Works by Dale Trumbore, Claudio Monteverdi, and Johannes Brahms
Please join Musica Sacra and guest conductor Elizabeth Eschen Cacciola as we perform the modern day secular requiem How to Go On by living composer Dale Trumbore set to texts by Barbara Crooker, Laura Foley, and Amy Fleury.
The exploration of love and grief in this work is complemented by Monteverdi’s Lamento della Ninfa and Brahms’ Schicksalslied, inspiring us to look for the moments of grace, connection, and purpose in our daily lives.
About our Guest Conductor
Based out of Boston, Elizabeth Eschen Cacciola works at the intersection of choral music and vocal pedagogy, whether it be on stage, in the classroom/studio, or from the podium.
As an educator and conductor, Liz has built voices and voice programs across the East Coast, and recently finished a 9-year tenure as the Director of the Holden Voice Program at Harvard University. While at Harvard, she also held positions as the Guest Faculty Resident Conductor of the Radcliffe Choral Society, Teaching Fellow Vocal Coach, and Instructor of Skills for Singing. She is in demand as a voice specialist for choir, having presented at University of Minnesota, Northeastern University, Queens College, Rhode Island College, and Brown University, along with civic ensembles and professional organizations. She regularly works with the Boston Choral Ensemble and treasures her long-standing relationship with Albany Pro Musica as Teaching Artist, Guest Conductor of the annual APM High School Festival, and Faculty for the Pro Musica International Choral Festival.
As a mezzo-soprano, she has credits in new music (Lorelei Ensemble and Juventas), opera (Boston Lyric Opera, Opera Tampa) and musical theatre (2016 Studio Cast Album of Hunchback of Notre Dame), but has truly found her home in professional ensembles specializing in Baroque music and choral masterworks. She regularly performs with Handel & Haydn Society, Boston Baroque, Emmanuel Music, Upper Valley Baroque (NH) and Oregon Bach Festival, and has made featured solo appearances with many area ensembles, among them Emmanuel Music, Chorus of Westerly, Harvard Choruses, Boston Choral Ensemble, Cantata Singers, Back Bay Chorale, Newburyport Choral Society, Rhode Island Civic Chorale & Orchestra, and Handel Society of Dartmouth.
Venue & Parking
Unless otherwise noted, all performances will take place at:
- First Church Congregational (on Cambridge Common)
- 11 Garden Street
- Cambridge, MA
Seating Chart
Parking
For our Harvard Square performances at First Church Congregational, Musica Sacra provides free parking for all subscribers, and discounted parking for single-ticket holders. The parking lot is University Place Garage, the entrance of which is at 79 University Road. The entrance will be on your RIGHT.
The walk from the covered garage to First Church is approximately 0.4 miles. Please be sure to bring your parking ticket with you to the concert to receive a parking voucher.
- Map of Parking Garage location, with walking directions to First Church Congregational. (You will need to turn down University Road to enter the garage).
Public Transportation
Bus and subway transportation options are conveniently located within a five-minute walk at the MBTA Harvard Square Red Line subway and bus station.
Accessibility
This facility is wheelchair-accessible. Wheelchair access is located at the side entrance, around and to the right of the main church doors on Garden Street.
Large-print programs are available upon request. Please call the Musica Sacra office at least 3 days in advance of performance and let us know how many large-print programs you will need. Our telephone number is (617) 349 - 3400.
Purchase Tickets
Streaming Tickets
You will receive a separate email with details for how to connect to the live stream. Live stream tickets are "pay-what-you-can." Please select the ticket price that feels appropriate for you.
In-person Tickets
Ticket sales for this performance have closed.
Notes on the Performance
From Director Mary Beekman
Our March 2025 concert is guest-conducted by Elizabeth Eschen Cacciola
We are so glad you are here tonight with us as we ponder and meditate on the question “How to Go On.” It’s a big one, and for many of us right now, a daily one. Monteverdi’s Lamento della Ninfa (1638) calls us to this moment with its opening “Non havea ancora Febo” chorus. Establishing right away our through-lines on the omnipresent wisdom of nature and the transformative power of grief, this pseudo-Greek-Chorus sets the stage by introducing our heroine; in this case, it’s the voice of Dale Trumbore and her three female poets that we are about to hear.
How to Go On is Trumbore’s 2017 secular requiem in eight movements, a prescient and deliberate sound-world inspired by the texts of living poets Barbara Crooker, Amy Fleury, and Laura Foley. It begins with vocal splitting—the bass voices moving from unison into whole-step dissonances, followed by ascending lines from the tenors and then the altos, with the sopranos approximating wailing soon after. Trumbore does not leave us so broken for too long, making sure we all rejoin to a shared B-natural by the end of the movement; this first movement identifies the “wedge” theme (the tearing apart and coming back together) that will be used throughout the work. As we go on, she continues to facilitate our connection with the poetry through careful aural depiction. Listen for the sudden, distant tonal shifts that ask us to rethink where we thought we were, or were going. Watch for Trumbore’s use of aleatory that shows her own letting go of control. Feel the destabilization of time through meter changes and extremely disjunct, simultaneous rhythmic patterns. Breathe with us, first as we “false start” in the repetition of “how” in #1, 2, and #6, and at the conclusion as we meditate, exhale, and release our grasping. This conclusion, “When At Last I Join,” speaks of bloom and the continued journey of the soul; Brahms has something to say about that as well in Schicksalslied, his 1871 dramatic “choral overture.”
Like How to Go On, Schicksalslied is full of musical surprises, playing on the mystery and questioning of the text by Friedrich Hölderlin. The first section, Langsam und sehnsuchtsvoll (Slow and longingly), is a lyrical and reverent meditation on the divine in E-flat, abruptly ending at the Allegro in C-minor that charges forward with a very human penchant towards chaos. There is “no place to rest,” and so Brahms makes the unconventional choice to never resolve back to E-flat. Instead, he makes the shift to C-major in the final Adagio. We have turbulently fallen from the harmonic celestial heavens, but a major key? Delivered in such a calm and resolute manner? Left intentionally ambiguous, perhaps Brahms has not given up on us yet… and we shouldn’t either.
As Pema Chödrön writes, “wretchedness—life’s painful aspect—softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person.” We finish our program tonight by finally answering the persistent question with the truest and best answer we know: we go on TOGETHER. Our compiled soundtrack tonight not only shows us that we face the loss, the unthinkable, the tearing apart; but also that there will always be coming back together. Nature does its work, and healing begins. If we allow it, we expand into more compassion, more ability to stand con passio, “witsuffering.” And as we’ve heard in the last few months, our strength going forward will be in our communities, in finding our people and holding each other up with whatever comes our way. Our final selections come from the Justice Choir Songbook, a treasure trove of songs celebrating these aspects of our humanity and inspired by the African diaspora and protest songs. We encourage you to join us in this last portion of the concert, lending whatever voice and heart you have to share, lifting our voices so that we can “be the change, hope, song, and light that you want to see in the world.”
Elizabeth Eschen Cacciola
February 2025