Martin Neary Directs Performance of Kurt Rohde’s "Endless"
On October 4, 2008, at Pomona College, world-renowned choral conductor Martin Neary directed the Millennium Consort Singers in a performance featuring Endless (2007), an a cappella choral work by Kurt Rohde, co-director of Empyrean Ensemble and professor of composition at UC Davis. Neary, former organist and chorus master at Westminster Abbey, served as choral director at UC Davis during Professor Jeffrey Thomas’s 2006–07 sabbatical. Performing among the Consort Singers was UC Davis alumna Donna Di Grazia, currently a professor of music at Pomona College.
Endless, dedicated to Rohde’s friends Genevieve Lee and Paul Mann, uses texts from Mann’s poem set of the same name. Says Rohde, “The poems selected deal with space, sound, light, movement, and the senses. There is a reminiscent quality to these poems, something ancient, perhaps stories told so many times again and again through a family's long history that they are eventually no longer fully understood for their original meaning. This is the quality of Mann's words that particularly moved me."