Kent Tritle

This recording guides the listener along a symbolic journey, one familiar to many as a Christian pilgrimage, as found in Dante’s Divine Comedy or Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. This spiritual journey may be said to reflect Christ’s persecution and suffering intermingled with his concession to God’s will with his redeeming final transformation into pure Love. On more musical terms, this program follows a dark-to-light continuum not unlike that of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. On a humanistic plane, the progression reveals despair and lamenting giving way to a faint-but-growing hope of salvation, and arrival at a new destination, with an evolved perspective. The ancient Hebrew concept of Zion is an important one for this program, inasmuch as it denotes a place of refuge or sanctuary. The Babylonian Hebrews’ longing for Zion was taken on by Christianized Black slaves as a metaphor for a safe homeland. The idea of Zion has expanded to signify a safe spiritual homeland, such as heaven or a calm perspective in one’s current life. At times this journey is individual, at times in community. At every stage there is interaction with the Deity; thus throughout, there is a compelling engagement between Creator and created, whether questioning, supplicating, or praising. It is from this foundation of mutual acknowledgment that we can trace a spiritual quest.… (más)