Echo Vocal Ensemble - Sarah Latto director
Gildas String Quartet
Oliver Wass (harp)
Christopher Tin’s The Lost Birds is a musical memorial to bird species driven to extinction by humankind. Sweeping and elegiac, it is a haunting tribute to the soaring flocks that once filled our skies; a celebration of their feathered beauty and their symbolism as messengers of hope, peace, and renewal. Echo and the Gildas Quartet are joined by harpist Oliver Wass to perform this thought-provoking work in an exquisite chamber arrangement. It is poignantly paired with Shostakovich’s Eighth String Quartet. Written at a dark time in Shostakovich’s life, the work nevertheless carries a powerful message: “as long as humanity lives on, you can lose everything but hope.”