Love the World You Live In: The World Premiere of Terra Infirma
Written by Alice Song & Alex Workman
On Oct. 30, Terra Infirma had its successful world premiere in Corson Auditorium, performed by IAA students with world-renowned harpist and IAA alumna Yolanda Kondonassis as the soloist. Commissioned by IAA for Kondonassis, percussionists and the IAA String Orchestra joined Kondonassis under the baton of Andrew Hilary Grams, and rehearsed extensively with violin faculty member and string orchestra conductor Ara Sarkissian.
The piece is inspired by Robert Walters’ poem “Terra Infirma.” Each movement is inspired by lines from the poem. Reena Esmail, the composer of Terra Infirma, described the arc of the piece as “a journey through a wildfire. It starts with an actual wildfire, and then halfway through the piece, you're processing what happened, and you're taking the internal journey through the wildfire.”
The concerto has unusual demands. The soloist plays harp and a variety of percussion instruments: bass drum, thundersheet, waterphone, djembe, gong, and crotales are only a few of the instruments played. They do not start the concerto on stage, and walk on while the orchestra is playing the first movement. Throughout the piece the soloist gradually moves their harp across the stage. By the end, the soloist is playing the harp on the opposite side of where they started.
“It's told through this protagonist who plays harp and percussion at the same time. It's a combination of just being in a ‘sound world’ and then being in that world that is the ‘sound world’...everything from the scratching of bare, dead branches against things, all the way to that flame and that fire at the end,” Esmail remarked.
Kondonassis originated that hybrid idea. “She was like, ‘I've always, really wanted to play percussion while I'm playing harp,’” Esmail recalled, describing how Kondonassis proposed combining the harp and percussion into the piece. “‘I know I could do this and play it like a hybrid instrument. It would be really fun.’ And I think she just wanted this challenge. So I was like, ‘Yeah, let's do it, let's do this challenge.’”
The concerto uses extended techniques in the string orchestra and percussion. Esmail visited IAA in the 2024-2025 school year to experiment with different ideas. She led a series of readings of Terra Infirma with the students.
Esmail was explicit about the importance of keeping the narrative deliberately open when writing the piece. “I want it to be a vague narrative, because…I don't like the idea that classical music gets prescriptive, because that's when it gets into basically propaganda territory, right?”
She based different movements of the piece on ragas: melodic frameworks used in Indian classical music that suggested seasons or times of day. “Movement two is that raga Deepak—fire. Even that is so ancient that people disagree on what it is. I just picked one that I was like, ‘I think this is the one that I want to use,’” she said, acknowledging the imperfect fit between traditions and her own narrative goals.
For Kondonassis, returning to IAA to premiere a piece of such physical and conceptual demands was an interesting challenge. Because the percussion elements were only accessible to her when she arrived at IAA, she prioritized the harp material before integrating the new instruments.
The premiere was especially notable because IAA had played a central role in Kondonassis’ formative years. “This is pretty much where I started. This is where everything—all the platelets in my brain—all my dots started connecting. When I came here when I was 14, there were many dots to be connected,” she stated, noting that performing this work in Corson Auditorium felt like a return.
Esmail praised the students’ courage and curiosity throughout the process: “For me, just watching you all, literally every rehearsal was twice as good as rehearsal before. And it was amazing, just watching the piece suddenly take shape from nothing into this beautiful piece.”
Sarkissian’s approach to guiding students through Terra Infirma was “not so different from a traditional piece.” He explained that when learning new pieces, the manuscript is still the “one and only source of truth.” Sarkissian has a background in doing new music, which helped him predict which passages in the piece would give students trouble.
After watching the world premiere, Sarkissian was pleasantly surprised by “the level of polish” in the performance. He was “really happy with both the quality of the performance and the ensemble.”
The recording for Terra Infirma took place in Corson Auditorium. It will be released on all streaming platforms during Earth Month (April) alongside two additional works by Esmail. It will also be accompanied by a documentary.
Terra Infirma is, in equal measure, a formidable testament to musicianship and theatrics while also showing how art is able to address environmental crises. “To me,” said Esmail, “Terra Infirma is asking to love the world that we live in.”