Tin’s “Lost Birds” takes flight at Ear Taxi Festival

Christopher Tin was the first composer to win a Grammy for a videogame soundtrack. His 2011 award for “Baba Yetu,” the theme song of Civilization IV, led the Recording Academy to revise its categories to be more expansive. That song’s soaring melody and stirring harmony have garnered its YouTube video some 27 million views.
These features of Tin’s work were on display when the Ear Taxi Festival presented his 2022 song cycle The Lost Birds Saturday night at DePaul University’s Gannon Hall.
The Lost Birds is a 12-movement, 50-minute elegy for bird species that have gone extinct as a result of human encroachment. Tin sets avian-inflected poems of Emily Dickinson, Sara Teasdale, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Cristina Rosetti for voices, strings, harp and percussion, which convey the work’s environmentalist message in a subtle, indirect manner.
In an introductory conversation with Ear Taxi artistic director LaRob K. Rafael, Tin unabashedly owned his commitment to writing music that “people like to play and hear” and a particular fondness for melody. Indeed, this invitingness is a defining feature of his oeuvre, and The Lost Birds abounds with moving vocal lines supported with tonally centered harmonies.
Michael Lewanski, conductor of Ensemble Dal Niente, led the William Ferris Chorale and members of DePaul’s Ensemble 20+ in an engrossing account of Tin’s opus. Lewanski established a warm sonic bed in the opening “Flocks a Mile Wide,” an instrumental prelude inspired by the decimation of the passenger pigeon in the late 19th century, which sets an elegiac tone for the entire work. A somber air pervades the ensuing settings, which palpably project a wistful sense of loss.
The Ferris singers gave a fully committed account of Tin’s score, singing with a supple collective timbre, clear diction, and spotless intonation. Ensemble 20+ were similarly dedicated, flexibly responding to their vocal colleagues under Lewanski’s engaged direction. Tin mines influences from English folksong to Renaissance plainchant to film music, with the performers deftly negotiating this stylistic variety. The material of “Flocks a Mile Wide” returns in the closing “Hope Is a Thing With Feathers,” though now treated with voices, to create a bookended architecture and concluding sense of solace.

Saturday’s concise first half comprised a set of brief a cappella works by Chicago composers, led by Ferris conductor Christopher Windle. Ben Zucker’s wordless Aneroidal explores “the world of tone and noise” available to vocalists via whistling, guttural humming, and ethereal hissing in close harmonies. A final low throaty grunt from the men punctuates the short movement.
Augusta Read Thomas’ Become the Sky, which the WFC premiered in 2024,sets a Rumi text with rising gestures and pure, wide intervals that convey the expanse of the firmament. Stacy Garrop’s “The Solitude of the Stars”is the final movement of her Postcards from Wyoming, written during a 2014 residence at the Ucross Foundation. Her textless setting captures the vast western skies with sustained soprano lines over pulsating lower voices. Ayanna Woods’ Close[r], now treats an experimental stanza by Charles McNulty with bell-like figures passing among the voices. The singers of the WFC were convincing advocates for these condensed movements, gamely responding to Windle’s incisive leadership.
Unfortunately, the QR-code-ificiation of concerts continues. Much of the relevant information for Saturday’s program, including movement titles and texts, were only available on one’s phone via a link in the printed program. Tin’s interview with Rafael ended with the composer lamenting that there is “too much tech” in our world and imploring audience members to “turn things off.” This was particularly ironic as everyone had to turn to the unfriendly online interface, flipping through 50 pages of prior Ear Taxi programs, to follow the progression of his work.
The Ear Taxi Festival runs through November 2 at venues across the city. eartaxifestival.com
Posted in Performances