Terce: A Practical Breviary
Terce: A Practical Breviary is a radical rethinking of a monastic 9:00 AM mass and an adaptation that reimagines the face of the “Holy Spirit” through the lens of the Divine Feminine. Sung by a community choir of 30-plus caregivers and makers, it is a wild meditation/celebration of the sacred mothers alive in all of us and how that manifests in regard to the Earth, each other, and ourselves. Inspired by ideas taken from three primary female mystics (Julian of Norwich, Hildegard von Bingen, and Robin Wall Kimmerer) this non-narrative song cycle blends new music, neo-soul, and gospel with traditional medieval organum— is percussed with active caretaking and craft making and is danced wildly. More of an event than an opera, it is built as an active ritual to celebrate and venerate our feminine alignment with nature and recover from living in the confines of a civilization built to control or ignore it.
Terce: A Practical Breviary is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Commissioning support provided by OPERA America’s Opera Grants for Female Composers program, supported by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation. Additional support provided by Café Royal Cultural Foundation. Commissioned, developed, and produced through HERE&Back as part of PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now.
Heather Christian (Creator)
Jacklyn Riha (Music Co-Director)
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Heather Christian (Creator)
Heather Christian is a Drama Desk and a two-time Obie Award-winning composer/performer making music-centered shows and rituals. She is a 2021 Richard Rodgers Award winner, 2022 Stephen Schwartz Outstanding New Composer awardee, and Sundance Institute Time Warner Fellow. Recent composing/performing credits include her own work Oratorio for Living Things (Ars Nova), Animal Wisdom (The Bushwick Starr, now a motion picture) I Am Sending You the Sacred Face (Theater In Quarantine/ YouTube— Vulture’s Top Theater Experience of 2020), Prime: A Practical Breviary (Playwrights Horizons’ Soundstage—IndieWire’s #1 Podcast Episode of 2020) in addition to being a lead artist on devised works Mission Drift (National Theater, London) and The World Is Round (BAM). She has released 11 records, teaches vocal-based music composition at NYU, owns and operates her own recording studio in Beacon, NY, and can be seen regularly in concert halls and dive bars as Heather Christian & the Arbornauts. heatherchristian.bandcamp.com
Jacklyn Riha (Music Co-Director)
Jacklyn Riha is a New York City based Music Director, Orchestrator, Vocalist and Music Arranger. Recent highlights include: Key 2/Music Assistant for Bad Cinderell (Broadway 2023), Key 2 Sub for Kimberly Akimbo (Broadway, 2023), Associate Music Director for Oratorio For Living Things (Off-Broadway, 2022), Music Assistant/Copyist for The Bedwetter (Off-Broadway, 2022), and Script-Score Supervisor for Suffs (Off-Broadway, 2022). As an orchestrator, her work has been featured in Rockers On Broadway (2023), the new musical Strange Faces (Austin, TX 2022), and for the World Premiere of the new musical, Worlds Apart (2019). Jacklyn graduated from Berklee College of Music with a degree in Orchestration and Vocal Performance, with a minor in Music Theater Conducting.