Breath to Light

Through music of celebration, remembrance, and reflection, Terry Schlenker's choral works invite us to consider the beauty of our shared journey. This concert explores the full arc of the human experience: the joy of life, the reality of death, and the mystery of what may lie beyond.

Together, these choral works invite us to contemplate not only where we come from and where we go, but also how we live in the time between. They offer moments of hope, wonder, and contemplation as we reflect on life's greatest mysteries.

 Kantorei features choral works of Colorado’s own Terry Schlenker in these concerts which will soon become Kantorei's next recording.

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Terry Schlenker grew up in a farming family on the Great Plains of North Dakota, where an early fascination with the piano led him—somewhat improbably for a farm boy—to begin composing music at the age of twelve. Despite the limitations of a small rural community, he pursued a musical education and went on to study composition at the University of North Dakota and the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music, where he earned a Master of Arts degree in composition.

Early in his compositional career, Schlenker focused primarily on piano, chamber, and orchestral works. In recent decades, his creative energy has been devoted largely to a cappella choral music.

For Schlenker, composition is not an esoteric intellectual exercise, but a means of articulating beauty, expressing his deepest self, and forging an emotional and spiritual connection for himself, and performers and listeners alike.