https://zephyrsymphony.org/work

Jamie Barton, mezzo-soprano

Nathan Chan, cello

Jake Heggie’s The Work at Hand is an intimate, deeply human meditation on courage and creation in the face of mortality. Composed in 2014 for mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton and cellist Anne Martindale Williams, the work sets poetry by Laura Morefield, written during her final year of life as she confronted terminal illness. Rather than lament, Heggie finds light — transforming loss into purpose and fragility into grace.

Scored for mezzo-soprano, cello, and orchestra, the three movements trace a journey from inward reflection to transcendent calm. The cello’s voice becomes both companion and conscience, entwined with the singer’s lines in shared vulnerability. Heggie’s lyrical language, by turns tender and luminous, captures the poet’s message: that art itself is a form of endurance. The Work at Hand is not about dying, but about living fully — an act of courage rendered in sound.

This performance is the Bay Area premiere of the orchestral version.