Clare McNamara

Clare McNamara is a mezzo-soprano scheduled to appear as a soloist with the conductorless string ensemble A Far Cry in Boston. The program pairs Bach's cantata "Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott" with new and twentieth-century American works for string orchestra. Based on this listing alone, listeners can expect her voice featured within Bach's cantata writing.

On this program, McNamara sings within Bach's cantata "Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott" (BWV 80), a work built around the Lutheran hymn "A mighty fortress is our God," where the melody returns in different guises across several movements. A mezzo soloist in this piece typically takes on one or more arias or duets, moments where the orchestra thins out and the vocal line carries the text's imagery of struggle and refuge. The rest of the concert surrounds this cantata with contemporary and mid-century American string writing, Carolyn Shaw Figgis-Vizueta's "Talamh (land)" and Julius Eastman's "Gay Guerrilla," both performed by the ensemble without a conductor, so listeners can expect the vocal writing to sit inside a program that moves between old counterpoint and newer, texture-driven string music.