SEEKING HIGHER GROUND REVIEWS

The climax to the season-opening concert by the Pacific Chorale in the new Segerstrom Concert Hall was a double premiere: first hearings of new works by important, internationally acknowledged American composers Morten Lauridsen and Jake Heggie.

Heggie’s “Seeking Higher Ground,” to a text by Sister Helen Prejean, is also brief, but thrilling in another context: its re-creating of the Hurricane Katrina events and aftermath. All the elements are here, re-created, alla breve – chaos, misery, confusion, hopelessness, finally reconciliation. It is a whirlwind of a piece, convincingly dramatic, ultimately touching.

- Daniel Cariaga, Los Angeles Times (Oct. 24, 2006)

Heggie’s mouthful of a piece, “Seeking Higher Ground: Bruce Springsteen Rocks New Orleans, April 30, 2006,” has real urgency to it. Its musical matter is hardly revolutionary, but it is used in a rhythmically driving and emotionally enthusiastic way. Its charisma grabs you.

“Seeking Higher Ground” is only eight minutes long, but it feels – with its ominous echo of the winds, its tolling chimes, its aspirating choral effects, its juicing rhythms, its crisp declamations and floating questions, percussive whacks and Cecil B. DeMille ending – eventful. Heggie has got ahold of something and everyone laid into it…

- Timothy Mangan, Orange County Register (Oct. 24, 2006)