Musicians from The Knights at Wethersfield: “On Wings of Song”

Join us as musicians from New York-based orchestra The Knights, now with a new series presented by Carnegie Hall, return to Wethersfield for a second year. The Knights share music that takes flight, written for strings, winds, harp, and percussion. In recent years, the COVID-19 pandemic along with other collective upheaval have forced us to confront some of nature and humanity’s destructive power. However, these challenges have also offered us an opportunity to slow down and notice natural beauty in many different forms, particularly in the guise of birds and other winged creatures. Birds are the original virtuoso musicians, sending out coded signals through their songs intended to affect a change in behavior of the listener (and perhaps, at times, just for “pleasure”). Recent studies have suggested that hearing “enjoyable music” lights up the same mesolimbic reward pathway for both human beings and birds. Music across cultures has often been inspired by either literal birdsong or the spiritual experience of uplift through sound and birds often symbolically represent guides to freedom. The program features songs and dances from a diverse group of composers, musical genres, and cultures, much of which either directly or indirectly take their cue from birds, butterflies, and other natural emblems of flight and the yearning for freedom.

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