Concert: Majel Connery: Elderflora

As part of the programming for Glyndor Gallery exhibition Trees we breathe, composer and vocalist Majel Connery presents Elderflora, an oratorio on the life and death of a tree. Narrated from the perspective of the tree itself, Elderflora invites the audience on a musical journey inside the mind of a tree, experiencing its thoughts and feelings in hyperreal detail. 

Created by Connery and performed with guitarist Matthew Walsh, Elderflora is part classical song cycle, part electronic soundscape, with snatches of madrigals and hymns intersecting with mood paintings that evoke wind, rain, and light. Structured as a series of musical portraits, each movement in the oratorio represents a significant moment in the life of the tree: birth by fire, discovery of the sun, or becoming a mother. 

“I want us to see humanity in the world around us,” says Connery. “Music gives me the power to join what we know with what we don’t know: to combine the familiar with the strange. Because if trees have a voice — and I think they do — that voice won’t sound like us. It’s going to sound utterly out of this world.” 

Questions? Please email us at visualarts@wavehill.org or call 718.549.3200 x251. 

The Glyndor Terrace Garden is accessible via a bluestone path that begins south of the Glyndor House entrance and continues along its western perimeter towards an ADA-compliant ramp located at the Glyndor Terrace Garden’s north entrance. Rain moves the performance inside Wave Hill House, which is fully accessible to all our visitors. The building is located along a paved route with moderate changes in grade.