Through Canada’s current awakening to its destructive and oppressive past, with colonial infrastructures and toxic power structures, this artistic program aims to challenge historically white, Christian, heteronormative narratives as they relate to personal and cultural identity.  Baritone Jonathon Adams has stated above that this concert is intended to be a “takeover” of colonial and Christian baroque music.  As a gay man myself, I, too, struggle with the complex relationship that Christianity and its social ideology has forced onto LGBTQ2S communities and the pressure to “other” ourselves into conformity. It is this damaging lifelong gaslighting that generates a deep struggle in healthy identity.  Through this programme, we are ‘sounding the alarm’ on mental health and the need to reclaim healthy identities from within contained and limiting ideologies.

As a musical symbol for Christian and colonial infrastructures, we have chosen two of Bach’s most glorious sacred cantatas to theatrically explore.  The first is his famous BWV 82 “Ich habe genug” (It is enough). This 25-minute monodrama for baritone is dramatically centred around the spirit’s yearning to escape the physical self through death.  “Ah! if only the Lord would free me from my body’s enslavement; Ah! If indeed my liberation were soon, With joy I would say to you, O World, It is enough.”

Our live, multi-media approach explores this idea of physical being, layered against a digital realization of the internal self and its multitudes.  Due to toxic internal narratives, added to our oppressive societal ‘scripts’, this tension of being, often amounts to an array of mental health issues and an inevitable yearning for release.  In this presentation, we don’t aim to speak directly to a literal death, but rather the process of emancipation from a fragmented identity, into a healthier alignment of self.

Our second cantata, BWV 56 “Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen” (I will carry the burden), is scheduled to be made into a film in the fall of 2021; tonight’s concert recording will function as its musical foundation.  Director Reneltta Arluk, an Indigenous actor and multi-disciplinary artist of Dene, Inuvialuit and Cree descent, will lead Jonathon through this cinematic experience with a pointed Indigenous lens — focused on the resurgence of cultural expression and an artistic reclaiming of land.  “My pilgrimage in the world is like a sea voyage: trouble, suffering, and anguish are the waves that cover me… Finally my yoke must fall away from me.  Then will I fight with the Lord’s strength, then I will have an eagle’s power, then I will journey from this earth and run without becoming fatigued.”  As these lyrics evoke, the film will reframe this forced Christian narrative to speak directly to the Indigenous community as told through a cultural journey on their land and their waters.  Through intentional and relentless action and connection, only then can Indigenous communities and their members reclaim cultural alignment and healing.

It is our goal to present these two fully theatricalized cantatas within a single concert experience in the future.  Thank you for supporting that artistic journey.

– Alan Corbishley:  Stage Director and Co-Producer, www.alancorbishley.com  www.soundthealarm.ca