Jonah Sirota – Strong SAD Album Pre Release Concert

Jonah Sirota live album-release performance!

Hear Grammy-nominated former Chiara Quartet violist Jonah Sirota in the release of his debut solo album STRONG SAD on the National Sawdust Tracks label

Jonah asked 7 composers to write pieces for everyday losses. STRONG SAD is the result. The elegy as a musical form has often found a home in the plaintive middle-register voice of the viola—it tugs, and makes us aware of our inner landscape. While some of these works may refer to lost friends and loved ones, this project will reaffirm that mourning is too important to save only for funerals, and that sadness, when given a chance to breathe, can be our best path to deep and lasting contentment and joy. Featuring new works by Jonah himself, Paola Prestini, Nico Muhly, Valgeir Sigur∂sson, Robert Sirota, A.J. McCaffrey, and Rodney Lister, as well as a new work from the improv duo Mondegreen (Jonah Sirota and Kurt Knecht).

“Maybe this is the secret chord – that each of us is whole within ourselves, to fully know and sing out our single note, so that we may join the wider chord, the set of strings, so that the sound we make moves and shakes each of us together in a dynamic, terrifying, shivering joy, covering us like light, clinging to us like dark.”

-Wes Sam-Bruce