Experiential Orchestra (EXO) presents Silence and Sound: Arvo Pärt’s Music for Strings at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in St. James Chapel, joining the worldwide celebration of the iconic Estonian composer’s 90th birthday season. This season, EXO invites listeners to explore the unique acoustics of the largest chapel of the Cathedral, where each note will reflect and reverberate – a meditation in stone, wood, and silence, as well as sound and space.

Music Director James Blachly has carefully curated this program of music for strings and percussion, which includes some of Pärt’s most beloved works – Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten and Vater Unser – as well as the US premieres of Arvo Pärt’s Sequentia and Orient & Occident. Pärt composed Sequentia in 2014 for the production Adam’s Passion and dedicated the work to Robert Wilson. Orient & Occident was composed in 2000, and is based on the text of Credo, the Nicene Creed in the Church Slavonic language – one of the few religious texts that are the same in the Western and Eastern Church. The program will also include Pärt’s Für Lennart in memoriam, Psalom, Silouan’s Song, and Da pacem Domine.

The GRAMMY®-winning Experiential Orchestra (EXO) brings audiences close to the music by engaging listeners through imaginative, immersive, and interactive concert experiences. Founded by Music Director James Blachly in 2009, EXO’s performances and recordings have been described as “strikingly persuasive” by the San Francisco Chronicle and “immaculate” by Musical America, and have been praised for having “luscious tone and poise” by Classics Today.