April 7 – 13: Paul Kariya, Manning on Lincoln, Ēriks Ešenvalds’ conversion . . .

Regent College’s Marketplace Institute is inviting the public to spend Friday evening (April 11) with Preston Manning, who will “curate a series of clips from the film Lincoln, designed to help us learn leadership lessons from this political icon. Preston will then lead a discussion time as we interact both with the film and with his own experience of political leadership.”

Ēriks Ešenvalds’ Passion and Resurrection

It’s not every day that the Georgia Straight publishes a Christian testimony, but their write-up on Ēriks Ešenvalds’ Passion and Resurrection (at the Chan Centre this Saturday, April 12) includes a brief but intriguing account of his journey to faith:

“Appropriately enough for the Easter season, Ēriks Ešenvalds’ Passion and Resurrection tells the story of how Jesus Christ was betrayed by a friend, tortured to death, and then reportedly came back to life. . . . The subtext of Ešenvalds’ piece, though, has as much to do with the Latvian composer’s own life as with the biblical Passion.

“It’s not that Ešenvalds is in any way comparing himself to the son of the god that he accepted into his heart at the tender age of 14. But both he and his country experienced their own resurrection during the 1980s, when he was a teenager and Latvia was emerging from under the domination of its neighbour, Russia.

“’I grew up in an ordinary Soviet family: my mom was a teacher, and my dad was a driver on an ambulance,’ Ešenvalds explains in thickly accented English from Portland, where he’s working with the Oregon Repertory Singers. ‘So no place for God, no place for church at all.’

“Then came what he calls ‘the awakening”.’ As in the other Baltic countries, Latvia’s long-dormant religious institutions were quick to fill the leadership gap left by the collapse of the Communist party. And although going to Sunday school was at first primarily a social experiment for the young composer, his musical gifts were quickly appreciated. By 14, he was playing piano and writing songs for his Baptist church’s choir, which was quickly followed by a true conversion experience.

“I experienced God touching my life,” he says. “That was a very important time for me. My parents had divorced when I was a small child, and in my teenage years I had a lot of very philosophical questions about life. And I’m so glad that I didn’t turn toward, like, drugs or smoking or alcohol. I found something much better: I found God and church and the power of prayer, and since that day I have been happy to experience God in my life.”

Promotional materials for the concert have this to say about the man and his work: “Rising young choral star Ēriks Ešenvalds’ Passion and Resurrection is a fiery, sumptuous and ecstatic setting of the Passion for choir and string orchestra with soprano soloist. In this work, Ešenvalds has combined texts from Byzantine traditions as well as the Old and New Testament and has created one of the most powerful and immediate choral works ever written.”

And the production: “Two of Canada’s top choirs, Chor Leoni and Elektra Women’s Choir, come together to present a program of powerful choral masterpieces from the past decade that view the traditional Passion story through a modern lens. David Lang’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Little Match Girl Passion draws its text and inspiration from the unlikely pairing of Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of The Little Match Girl and J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. In this emotionally charged work, the pain and longing of a homeless girl is transfigured into a human Passion story for our own time and place.”