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Melissa Dunphy | On The Horizon

CD Release Date: February 6, 2026

Mendelessohn Chorus of Philadelphia Commonwealth Youth Choir Dominick DiOrio conductor The Timberdale Brass Ting Ting Wong piano Chris Hanning percussion Brent Behrenshausen percussion

A lone trumpet fanfare opens On the Horizon — mournful and portentous. Then rolling piano chords and timpani gather force before the full adult chorus enters in thunderous unison. Recorded live by the Mendelssohn Chorus of Philadelphia and the Commonwealth Youth Choir under Dominick DiOrio, this new cantata by Australian-born composer Melissa Dunphy wastes no time in declaring its intent.

“Gather your people, gather your things… hold onto trembling hands,” the choirs urge. Brass and snare add a restless, rock-inflected urgency. It feels like an alarm call.

Dunphy, long known for politically charged vocal writing, has here collaborated directly with young singers to create a libretto shaped by their own reflections on climate change. It is candid, blunt, occasionally wry and, anxious, but also ultimately hopeful. “We know we’re living in strange days… when we look up, we can’t see the stars.”

In the apocalyptic “A Trumpet Sounds”, the players of Timberdale Brass blaze like sirens. “Hail and fire fall to the ground… A trumpet sounds… Darkness blankets the earth.” Minor tonalities dominate, and the cumulative effect is grim. This is a generation describing a future they did not choose.

Yet the emotional arc is carefully shaped. A children’s-choir-only movement provides the first real pivot: “We can’t change the past, but we define the future.” The sound is distinctive, innocent but resolute, rising on orchestral swells before tapering into something more fragile and human.

“Anger” arrives with jazzy bite rather than fury, brass glissandi exhaling audible “hmpf”s beneath lines like “Don’t wait around like frogs boiling in a pot.” In another movement, stamping rhythms suggest automaton-like, ant-march humans consuming mindlessly, until the text shifts towards understanding and solution. “The powerful people we’re looking for are right here.”

The emotional heart of the work is “The Beach”, a gently unfolding narrative of a community responding to devastation. Pacific-inflected warmth, wave-like percussion and growing choral sonority create a sense of collective responsibility. Heartfelt.

The finale, drawing on Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Renascence, lifts the tone without dissolving the urgency. “Spring up and hail the earth… raise your arms high and laugh into the sky.” The live recording captures audible whoops of applause, a reminder that this is music to be experienced in community. Its theatrical sweep, its directness, its emotional volatility all thrive on a shared experience.

By choosing the cantata form, historically used for sacred reflection and civic statement, Dunphy places these young voices within a long tradition of communal storytelling. The collaboration is not symbolic; it is structural. Their words shape the architecture of the work itself.