Recent News & Events from The ISOCM
The Premiere of Vespers Sequence, Following "The Past, Present and Future of Orthodox Music"
On January 21, 2017, Fr Ivan Moody, ISOCM board chairman, was present in New York for the world premiere of his new work Vespers Sequence. The composition featured in concert, settings of Orthodox texts, given by the renowned ensemble New York Polyphony at the Church of St Mary the Virgin, on West 46th Street.
On the previous evening, Fr Ivan gave a public interview at St Vladimir's Orthodox Seminary, entitled “The Past, Present and Future of Orthodox Music.”
The podcast and lengthy question and answer session with Fr Ivan, hosted by Dr. Peter Bouteneff of St. Vladimir’s Seminary, is available on Ancient Faith Radio.
ISOCM Members Speak at "Arvo Pärt: Sounding the Sacred"
In May 2017, Fr Ivan Moody was the keynote speaker at the "Arvo Pärt: Sounding the Sacred" conference hosted by St. Vladimir’s Seminary and Fordham University, on their Lincoln Center Campus in New York. Fr Ivan presented a paper discussing the theology of the Incarnation in Pärt's music.
The conference, which was opened by His Beatitude Metropolitan Tikhon of the Orthodox Church in America, featured a distinguished array of speakers included many other Orthodox scholars familiar to ISOCM members, such as Dr. Alexander Lingas and Dr. Jeffers Englehardt, and experts on Pärt's music from many other areas of research.
The eclecticism of the event was symbolized by the inclusion in final panel of Laurie Anderson. There will be a published volume based on this conference in due course.
The "Zero Conference" of the European Academy of Religion
It was a great honour for ISOCM to be invited, by Professor Olivier Tourny, to be represented as part of the music panel of the "Zero Conference" of the newly-established European Academy of Religion.
As the Society’s board chairman, Fr Ivan Moody travelled to Bologna, Italy, in the third week of June 2017 to give a presentation on the history and work of ISOCM to a distinguished panel of musicologists working on sacred music from many different perspectives and traditions.
In the process many new contacts were made, and ISOCM will be present at the official first Conference to be held in Bologna once more in March 2018.
This is a genuinely exciting prospect for the future of the study of Orthodox Church music within a broad international context, and will undoubtedly help to raise the international profile of ISOCM.