Winter Choral Concert
Program art and poster made for the Harvard-Westlake Winter Choral Concert 2021. The design aimed to display the cold and loneliness typically present in winter and show how through community and music we can come together and provide warmth in that darkness.
Created in Adobe Illustrator
Much of my design connected back to the repertoire of the concert. Here is a more detailed dive into the symbolism (delivered in a speech I prepared at the concert).
I found a lot of inspiration in our song: Lament for Pasiphae.
One of the most important and prominent lyrics of the piece is “dying sun, shine warm a little longer”. As this piece is part of the Mid-winter songs collection by Morten Lauridsen, this lyric could be taken to represent the shortening of days during winter, and with the loss of light there comes a loss of hope, safety, and comfort. Morten Lauridsen himself has been stated saying “ I identified with the poet as ‘dying sun’ which seems to me to speak to middle age and the prospect of losing ones brightness as one ages”.
This led me to another important line: “my eye dazzled with tears shall dazzle yours conjuring you to shine.” This line speaks to a sense of shared grief and compassion, showing how we can create our own light and hope through connections with others. This was where I found the most potent theme of unity in this our repertoire. The piece speaks about finding light in the darkness through your community, and coming out of quarantine where it felt like it was impossible to find meaningful connections with those around us, this message feels especially pertinent right now during the pandemic. This, I think, is something that our choir has come to represent beautifully, being able to come together and create music as a group has allowed me and my peers to connect with each other in a way that only choir can. It is through singing this text together that we give it meaning and power.
To represent a “dying sun” I chose to have an eclipse that is almost entirely blocking out the sunlight - showing the fading of hope. And to represent the idea of creating that hope ourselves, through our community - I lit up the dark sky with many stars. To show how it is with the combined efforts of us, our peers, our friends, and our family that we find and create our own light within the darkness.