Bozeman Magazine

“Daring and Original” - The New Republic

Earth Tomes is a collaborative project featuring ROOTS IN THE SKY, Montana’s premier chamber choir, and JAMES SEWELL BALLET, which celebrated its 30th anniversary last year. Earth Tomes explores a series of juxtapositions: ballet/choir, historical/contemporary music, urban/rural settings, and sacred/secular perspectives on death and grief.

The singers and dancers will take the stage at the same time for a collaborative performance of ballet and choir. The piece is structured around J.S. Bach’s funeral motet Jesu, meine Freude, and
asks questions about the ways in which we view ourselves in relation to others through a counterpoint of music and movement.

Interesting tidbit...
Jesu, meine Freude was written in the early 1700s, and was first recorded in 1927.
It’s still being performed today, nearly 300 years after it was written.

About James Sewell Ballet:

James Sewell Ballet was founded in New York City by James Sewell and Sally Rousse and brought to Minnesota in 1993. Combining their expertise, vision and chutzpah they envisioned a
close-knit company of dance artists willing to both challenge their physical limits and expand their notions about ballet. Over three decades later, critically acclaimed JSB performances move and delight audiences across the country. The embodiment of the original vision is a professional company of dancers performing innovative work that explores the technical boundaries of ballet.

About Roots in the Sky:
With performances described as “the best choral singing we’ve ever heard in Bozeman (or almost anywhere),” Roots in the Sky (formerly the Aoide Chamber Singers) has established itself as Montana’s premier chamber choir through its commitment to presenting thoughtfully programmed performances of historical and contemporary choral works that ask questions about the world in which we are living.

Sought-after for collaborations, Roots in the Sky has appeared in performance with
Grammy Award-winning choir The Crossing, Jitro Czech Children’s Choir, and many of the
Gallatin Valley’s finest instrumentalists. Roots in the Sky has performed across the state of Montana at venues including at the Tippet Rise Arts Center as part of the Montana State University Honors College Musicale, in Red Lodge as part of Music from the Beartooths, in the Bozeman Public Library as part of the Montana Chamber Music Society’s Noon Notes series for elementary students, as the chorus of a contemporary chamber opera at the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center in Big Sky,
at First Presbyterian Church of Bozeman as part of Mainly Music, at mass in the Cathedral of St. Helena, and in concert in Missoula, Kalispell, and Big Sky.