Author: Mark Anthony Martinez II
Wednesday November 19th, 2025 – The Voices of Ascension Gala this year took place at the Museum of the City of New York and was a splendid affair, filled with interesting people and beautiful music. The Gala had two special guests who were being honored at the event: Anthony Roth Costanzo (photo above), countertenor opera star and also the General Director and President of Opera Philadelphia, as well as Alexandra Munroe, Senior Curator at Large, Global Arts, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation; Chair, Aspen Music Festival and School.
The event started with a cocktail reception where the attendees mingled and chatted while the night’s honorees flitted around chatting amongst the crowd. Everyone was in a festive mood, and some of the outfits that people wore truly seemed like they had come straight off a runway in terms of how daring and avant-garde they were.
Once the party aspect of the gala had settled down, the musical portion of the night began. The audience sat on the ground floor of the museum, below the spiral staircase, as both Costanzo and Munroe were honored with lifetime achievement awards.
The program was an eclectic mix of Renaissance to modern pieces that highlighted the many things that Voices of Ascension has to offer.
The program started with a piece, El Grillo, by composer Josquin des Prez, a Renaissance composer from what is now modern-day France. The piece was performed by a quartet of singers from Voices of Ascension: Liz Lang (soprano), Kirsten Sollek (contralto), Chad Kranak (tenor), and Joseph Beutel (bass-baritone).
The piece was jaunty and very characteristically medieval—but in the best way. The singers performed with such energy that the music was truly brought to life. The quartet was so animated with their singing that what could have been just a choral work became a real performance.
The next piece performed was a new composition that had its world premiere at the gala. The piece, Mine Ear, My Eye, My Hand, was composed by Nico Muhly and written in honor of Alexandra Munroe. The piece was again performed beautifully by the quartet of singers and provided a nice counterpoint to the medieval piece just performed.
The next piece was a cello and voice duet called Changing Light by Kaija Saariaho. The artists in this piece were Alice Teyssier (soprano) and Dr. Tommy Mesa (cello). The piece was interesting and used a good deal of extended vocal technique on the part of Teyssier. At times, it seemed baroque in styling but definitely ventured further into a more modern soundscape than the preceding modern piece.
After Changing Light was performed, the quartet of a cappella singers returned to sing a piece called TaReKiTa by Reena Esmail. The piece derives its name from the Indian drum, the tabla, and the sounds that it makes. The piece’s text was entirely based on the phonemes from the title itself—Ta, Re, Ki, Ta. It was an interesting percussive song that explored how the human voice could connect to such a different type of instrument and emulate it.
The penultimate piece was a classic: Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1. Mesa returned to perform the cello masterpiece wonderfully. The mini concert was able to move through so many different genres and eras of music so well, and having a perennial classic like this was a great way to anchor all the other pieces.
The final piece was perhaps the most anticipated, because one of the guests of honor, Costanzo, performed Vivaldi’s Sol da te, mio dolce amore from Orlando Furioso. Costanzo will be performing a pastiche opera from Vivaldi’s works at Opera Philadelphia in the coming year, so this might also have been a preview of that new (and old) piece.
Costanzo is at home in this baroque aria and performed deftly and beautifully. I’ve heard several countertenors over the years, and Costanzo certainly ranks among the top. He sounds so natural in a way that is often hard to achieve with countertenor repertoire and worked so well with the instrumentation. On a fun note, the flutist who performed the lion’s share of the instrumental melody was Ms. Teyssier, who performed the modern vocal piece earlier in the concert.
Once the piece, and the concert, was over, the audience gave a warm applause and ovation for the musicians and honored guests of the night.
~ Mark Anthony Martinez II
Oberon's Glade 