Heather Christian

To describe "Oratorio" is to flirt with the inadequacy of language. It is a musical work—a sung-through piece in the formal lineage of the oratorio, that 17th-century form that eschews staging and dialogue in favor of spiritual rumination through voice. Think Handel’s "Messiah," and then think again—"Oratorio for Living Things" shares the same bones, but not the flesh. Christian, ever the aural alchemist, reclaims and “rewilds” the form, unbinding it from its ecclesiastical constraints and infusing it with a heady blend of the sacred, the scientific, and the speculative. [more]