Divine Art Announces an Exciting New Release from Conspirare

Divine Art is excited to announce advena: liturgies for a broken world, featuring world premieres of choral music from composer Mark Buller performed by GRAMMY® Award-winning choir Conspirare and Artistic Director Craig Hella Johnson. Releasing digitally on August 29, 2025 and on CD on September 5, 2025 on Divine Art Records.

Born of personal reckonings with inherited faith and culture, Mass in Exile and Requiem for the Light are liturgies shaped by the world of today. Composed by Mark Buller with librettist Leah Lax, these works reimagine these ancient forms with the immediacy our present moment demands. 

These works are presented between two companion works — Introit: Fruit of Your Heart and Communion: A Questioning — with texts by British poet and librettist Euan Tait which offer chant-like settings that extend the project’s core themes, anchoring the whole in a wider human arc.

Artistic Director and conductor Craig Hella Johnson is passionate about the power of Buller’s music in this moment, saying:

 “We find ourselves in a pivotal cultural moment—one that calls for expressions of beauty and truth, offered both for inspiration but also as acts of resistance. This collaborative art—Mark Buller’s music and the words of Leah Lax and Euan Tait—creates a space of welcome where we are reminded of our shared humanity, our urgent need for bold truth-telling, and our capacity to heal and grow.”

Conspirare continues its ongoing commitment to commissioning and performing music of today’s most vibrant living composers with this release.  advena: liturgies for a broken world is a powerful vehicle for a global audience to embrace music as a conduit for reflecting on the global pain of migration, displacement, and cultural fracture, our growing sense of alienation from ourselves, from one another, and from the natural world.

Conspirare is at their finest in this music and singers Simon Barrad, Emily Yocum Black, and Michael Hawes can be heard in solo roles. Conspirare is joined by dynamic instrumental collaborators Patrice Calixte, Mariama Alcântara, Bruce Williams, Douglas Harvey, Jessica Valls, Marc Garvin, and Thomas Burritt.

Conspirare gratefully acknowledges Lynne Dobson and Greg Wooldridge for their support of this recording. This project is also supported in part by the Joel Brauer Fund for New Music and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Conspirare thanks the following individuals and organizations for their additional generous support of Conspirare: H-E-B, Hella Circle, Still Water Foundation, Texas Commission on the Arts, St. Martin’s Lutheran Church, Robert Simpson and the Houston Chamber Choir, Conspirare Board and Staff, Marvin J. Brittman, Dixie Camp, Fran and Larry Collmann, William G. Fivecoat, Robert and Lara Harlan, Sheri Clark Henriksen, Jeff and Gail Kodosky, DeeAnne and Stephen Paulson, Rachel and Dean Revering, Gayle Glass Roche, Nancy Scanlan and every co-creator who believes in the power of music to heal and connect us.