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As the world marks the 90th birthday of iconic Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, New Yorkers will have a rare opportunity to experience his music in a setting uniquely suited to its spirit. This February, conductor James Blachly and the Experiential Orchestra (EXO) return to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine with Silence and Sound: Arvo Pärt’s Music for Strings, an immersive series of performances that place sound, space, and stillness in quiet dialogue.
The concerts continue a relationship between EXO, Blachly, and Pärt’s music that has already drawn wide attention. In 2021, the orchestra presented sold-out performances of Pärt at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Temple of Dendur. In 2023, EXO returned to the Cathedral for two acclaimed performances of Passio. Those projects established a reputation for presenting Pärt’s music not simply as concert repertoire, but as a contemplative experience shaped by architecture and acoustics.
That approach reaches a new level in this season’s performances, which will take place in the intimate St. James Chapel, located within the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The chapel’s scale and resonance allow listeners to experience Pärt’s spare, luminous sound world up close, where each sustained tone and silence lingers in the air. Pärt’s music, often described as meditative or prayer-like, feels particularly at home here, unfolding slowly against stone and wood in a space designed for reflection.
The program, curated by Blachly, focuses on works for strings and percussion and includes two U.S. premieres: Sequentia and Orient & Occident. Sequentia, composed in 2014 for Robert Wilson’s theatrical production Adam’s Passion, is dedicated to Wilson and features an especially delicate interplay between strings, percussion, and silence. Orient & Occident, written in 2000, draws on the text of the Nicene Creed in Church Slavonic—one of the few sacred texts shared by both Eastern and Western Christian traditions—making it an apt choice for the Cathedral, long known for its ecumenical and interfaith commitments.
Alongside these newer works, the program includes some of Pärt’s most widely loved compositions, including Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten, Da pacem Domine, Silouan’s Song, Psalom, and Für Lennart in memoriam. Pärt’s setting of the Lord’s Prayer, Vater Unser, will be performed by mezzo-soprano Meg Bragle, a specialist in Baroque and Classical repertoire praised by the Toronto Star for her “memorable, raw-silk voice.”
Blachly notes that the Cathedral itself plays a central role in shaping the performance. “I chose Sequentia for this program because of the extraordinarily delicate way the percussion interacts with both the strings and silence,” he says. “Those sonorities will ring in this space. Orient & Occident is particularly well-suited to these concerts because of the Cathedral’s ongoing interfaith tradition. Pärt composed the piece as a way to bridge Catholic and Orthodox traditions.”
Adding further depth to the event, EXO will welcome Michael Pärt, the composer’s son and co-founder of the Arvo Pärt Centre in Estonia, to the performances. Peter Bouteneff, author of Arvo Pärt: Out of Silence, has also served as an advisor, offering insight into the Orthodox traditions that inform much of Pärt’s work.
Silence and Sound: Arvo Pärt’s Music for Strings will be presented in three performances:
Thursday, February 19 and Friday, February 20 at 7:30pm, and Saturday, February 21 at 3:30pm. All performances take place in the St. James Chapel at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine,located at 1047 Amsterdam Avenue.
The performances on Thursday and Friday will be proceeded by a pre-concert talk at 6:30pm given by Michael Pärt, Arvo Pärt’s son. These talks are open to ticket buyers and will take place in St. James Chapel.
Tickets are available through the Cathedral’s website, stjohndivine.org. For Upper West Siders and visitors alike, the concerts offer a chance to step out of the city’s usual rhythm and into a rare musical space where quiet, resonance, and time itself seem to slow.
It is wonderfully coincidental that this is occurring just as Yoko Ono has turned 93. Ono and Part are mutual “fans” of each other’s work. In fact, Part was one of the first modern composers (along with John Cage, with whom Ono both collaborated and performed (separately) with at a few events) to realize (i) that Yoko’s alleged “caterwauling” (for which she continues to be vilified by the musically ignorant) was, in fact, a very important contribution to the avant-garde, particularly aleatoric vocal music, and (ii) that Yoko’s overall contributions to the musical avant-garde were significant, and began much earlier than most people think. (Even Igor Stravinsky and Krzysztof Penderecki were aware of and appreciated the chance she was taking in bringing aleatoric elements to popular music.)
Part was also an influence on Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Brian Eno, Frank Zappa, and possibly other well-known artists.
Given Part’s criminally underrecognized contributions to modern music, I am going to do my best to attend one of the concerts mentioned in the article.
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