American saxophonist and composer Paul Winter has announced the release of Solstice Saga available to view for free on YouTube: “As we are coming into solstice week, I’d like to share with you an offering that came to us back near the beginning of our solstice saga, one that has continued to resonate with us all these years.
It is a poem, “Morningside Cathedral”, written by cultural historian Thomas Berry, after he had attended our fourth annual Winter Solstice Celebration at the Cathedral in New York, in December 1983.
During these ensuing four decades, this poem has remained the most prophetic evocation of our solstice celebrations I’ve known.
For it was the Cathedral, and the invitation the Consort received to play here, that gave birth to the aural-vision for celebrating the winter solstice.
Though I had yet to meet Thomas, it was as if he intuited in words what we were aspiring to do with music, in this magnificent space of the Cathedral.
Given this convergence of Consort and Cathedral, Thomas’s poem has been like a mandate for what was wanting to come forth in our solstice celebration.
Thomas Berry (1914-2009) was one of the twentieth century’s most prescient and profound thinkers. As a cultural historian, he sought a broader perspective on humanity’s relationship to the Earth in order to respond to the ecological and social challenges of the times. His best-known books are: “The Dream of the Earth”; “The Great Work”; and “The Universe Story”(co-written with Brian Swimme).
Thomas was a mentor for the Very Rev. James Parks Morton, Dean of the Cathedral for 25 years, from 1972 to 1996, whose dream was to create a bridge between spirituality and ecology. He became known as “The Green Dean.”
Solstice Saga is a retrospective three-hour video odyssey that interweaves iconic performances from our first forty years of these celebrations at the Cathedral. It’s now available to view for free on YouTube.”
Author: World Music Central News Room
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