Cappella Romana - Robert Kyr: A Time for Life (2020)

Commissioned by Cappella Romana and inspired by the initiatives of His All-Holiness +BARTHOLOMEW Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Robert Kyr’s A Time for Life explores the urgent issue of ecological crisis through texts from the Greek Orthodox Service of the Environment, the Bible, and Native American songs, chants, and prayers.

An environmental oratorio by composer Robert Kyr, commissioned by Cappella Romana in 2007 and now recorded for the first time, this work explores the urgent issue of ecological crisis caused by humanity s inability to live in harmony with the natural world. Kyr’s music wept for the Earth. It shuddered and then grew stronger, blooming into beauty before evaporating in silence. –The OregonianA Time for Life draws from texts in Greek Orthodoxy, the Bible, and Native American prayers with an ultimately optimistic approach. The work traces a journey from the glory of Creation through potential modern destruction to a hopeful future, in which humanity serves as a responsible steward of the earth and thus realigns itself with the creative forces of existence, resulting in a spiritual awakening that leads from a state of division and separation to the way of unity and wholeness.