Los Angeles’s First Congregational Church (also known as First Church or FCCLA), along with the Resonance Collective, marks the return of their Great Works on The Great Organs series with the concert premiere of Irish composer Patrick Cassidy’s The Mass, a new setting of the Latin Mass for choir and organ. Noted actor and special guest Martin Sheen will host the live premiere, lending his powerful voice to The Mass’s narrations. Laude, First Church’s professional chamber ensemble who recorded the album, will serve as soloists and sing with FCCLA’s Cathedral Choir. First Church Music and Arts Director David Harris will conduct, and Organist-in-Residence Christoph Bull will accompany on The Great Organs of First Church.
Cassidy’s The Mass, the first-ever symphonic Latin Mass setting from an Irish composer, draws equally on the composer’s Irish roots as on his vast experience in both classical and film music. By reimagining the traditional Catholic Mass text through the lens of its universality, Cassidy and his collaborators put forward a human response to one of the most trying periods in our collective memory.