Upcoming Events

The Hundred Windows

Thursday, June 5, 8 pm
Saturday, June 7, 8 pm

Rochester Academy of Medicine
1441 East Ave.
Rochester, NY 14610

Both performances will also be livestreamed:
🖥️ View Thursday, June 5, livestream recording
🖥️ View Saturday, June 7, livestream recording

Mount Hope World Singers, in collaboration with visual artist Christine Banna and composer Logan Barrett, is thrilled to present The Hundred Windows, an immersive, multidisciplinary exploration of the senses featuring 12 choral works from around the globe, a quadraphonic electronic soundscape, and projected animations. Both the soundscape and projections will be live-mixed, making each performance unique.

The show is inspired by the umwelt, a term coined in the 1930s by German biologist Jakob von Uexküll, and by Ed Yong’s beautiful non-fiction book on this subject, An Immense World. An umwelt is the specific way in which organisms of a particular species perceive and experience the world, shaped by the capabilities of their sensory organs and perceptual systems. 

Senses featured in The Hundred Windows include sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing, echolocation, electroreception, magnetoreception, nociception (pain), proprioception (self in space), thermoreception (heat/cold), equilibrioception (balance), and extrasensory perception (ESP). 

The Hundred Windows features choral works from Malaysia, Haiti, South Africa, Norway, Brazil, Ireland, Australia, China, Ecuador, the United States, Canada, and the Ute people; the languages the chorus will be singing in include Malaysian, Haitian Creole, Xhosa, Portuguese, Mandarin, and Latin. Two of the songs are in untranslated indigenous languages, two feature neutral syllables in lieu of words, and two are in English.

The song order is programmed to form a figurative ouroboros (the snake that eats its own tail), symbolizing a cycle through birth, life, death, and rebirth, and referencing the circular nature of our sensory bubbles.

The set for The Hundred Windows was created in reference to a metaphor offered by Jakob von Uexküll in his original monograph. This metaphor describes our consciousness as a house filled with windows, overlooking a garden which represents the wild and beautiful information of the universe around us. The way we construct and experience reality is dependent on what kind of windows we possess, how many there are, and how those windows interact.

Both performances will be ASL interpreted. There will be balloons available, enabling audience members to feel sonic vibrations with their hands, and an interactive Xbox controller linked to the post-show soundscape. A reception follows both concerts at 9 pm. We hope you will join us!

Tickets are available on a sliding payment scale, with a suggested contribution of $15 each. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. Any remaining tickets will be sold at the door. 

📻 Hear Annika Bentley discuss the show on WAYO 104.3 FM's "Mouth Sounds."

📺 Watch Christine Banna and conductor Brian White chat about the show — and preview its animation — on FOX Rochester.

📖 Read CITY Magazine's article in which arts reporter Patrick Hosken calls this "a bold concert with a staggering scope."

This project is funded in part by Amber Light International: an inclusive, interdisciplinary approach to spirituality without dogma or religion.

This project is made possible in part by funds through the Rochester Area Community Foundation; by funds through the Genesee Valley Council on the Arts’ Aid to Localities program; and by funds from the Statewide Community Regrants Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of The Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by the Genesee Valley Council on the Arts.

This project is also funded in part by the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation Arts & Culture Initiative administered by Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo in partnership with Rochester Area Community Foundation. The Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Arts & Culture Initiative was established at the Community Foundation to support arts and culture in the eight counties of Western New York, plus Monroe County, in recognition of the key role arts and culture organizations play in a thriving economy. Part of that announcement includes $500,000 in annual funding to be awarded primarily to support small to mid-sized arts and culture organizations in the nine counties.