"Christian is an artist of astonishing virtuosity, unmistakable style, and boundless fascination, as well as profound reverence, for the miracles of the world, which she locates in spaces great and small, events both cosmic and daily. She sings with a soaring, shimmering twang, plays the piano with the finesse of the concert hall and the stomp and swing of the saloon, and creates pieces of performance that send folks scurrying in search of sufficiently expansive descriptors."
"Staged by Lee Sunday Evans in an intimate in-the-round space swathed in blue fabric, with its performers flowing through the aisles and amid the audience like platelets through veins, Oratorio for Living Things is what is says - a classical oratorio - and also its own strange and beautiful new creature. That more than half of the libretto is in Latin and still manages to wrench hearts is its own marvel."
Heather Christian received a MacArthur Fellowship on the first day of rehearsal for the revival of Oratorio for Living Things, rendering her too overwhelmed to return that day. She composes genre-bursting music-theater that blends classical and inventive elements, sung with a soaring, shimmering twang and accompanied by piano playing that ranges from concert-hall finesse to saloon stomp and swing. The revival, staged by Lee Sunday Evans in an intimate in-the-round space, features performers moving through aisles and an often-Latin libretto that still wrenches hearts. Christian does not perform in this production, yet her spirit animates it. Her parents practiced Catholic and Methodist faiths, and she was baptized twice.
Read at Vulture
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