Luciano Berio’s Circles was first performed at Tanglewood on August 1, 1960. Berio wrote at its premiere, “Music is never pure: it is attitude: it is theatre. It is indivisible from its gestures. The task is to entrust the sense of the musical action to the specific abilities of the protagonists, to give them the possibility of defining for themselves the conditions through which eventuality is transformed into reality, before the eyes of the listener, in the hearing of the viewer. In Circles the possibilities are enlarged by the presence of the words, Nos. 25, 76 and 221 from Collected Poems by e. e. cummings: “stinging gold swarms...”, “riverly is a flower...”, “n(o)w the how dis(appeared cleverly)world…”.

Soprano Lucy Shelton, percussionist Eduardo Leandro, and Yellow Barn’s composer-in-residence Stefano Gervasoni discuss Circles, in addition to works by the composer, which have been explored during Yellow Barn’s final week of summer performances.