June 7th, 2019
St. Saviour's Anglican Church, Riga

June 8th, 2019
Malnava Our Lady of the Rosary Roman Catholic Church

MacMillan
William Briant, organ

For its third project, the Riga Project Choir invited listeners to a concert featuring the works of leading Scottish composer James MacMillan.

The program's cornerstone was MacMillan's rarely-performed masterwork "Cantos Sagrados" for choir and organ, which featured the exceptional young British organist William Briant. MacMillan's work discussed the politically-motivated murders which took place in the 1970s and 1980s in Argentina's "Dirty War", which took the lives of roughly 30,000 people.

“Although James MacMillan is one of the world's best-known modern composers, his music remains rarely performed in Latvia. The themes in 'Cantos Sagrados' remain relevant today, even thirty years after the work's premiere. This piece is particularly meaningful in Latvia, where similar repressions took place during the Soviet occupation."
          Christopher Walsh Sinka
          RPK Artistic Director          
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The program also featured two arrangements of Scottish folk songs, two motets from the composer's "Strathclyde Motets" cycle, as well as multiple works for solo organ.