By Aaron Keebaugh

Among artistic director Holly Druckman’s goals is to turn Cappella Clausura into a “very serious player in the Boston early-music-new music scene.”

Artistic director Holly Druckman conducting a rehearsal with Cappella Clausura. Photo: courtesy of the artist

When she sat down to program her upcoming concerts with Cappella Clausura, conductor Holly Druckman did what she usually does: organized musical selections around a theme that can symbolize both inward tension and outward perils.

“To me it feels a little like I’m curating an exhibit at a museum or something,” she said about programming her concerts in a recent interview over Zoom.

Sometimes a program can revolve around a common idea or feeling. Cappella’s concerts this weekend are titled “Music to Lighten the Darkness,” suggesting as much personal as political struggle.

On the surface, the choices resonate with the grim emotions surrounding seasonal depression and the gradual darkening of the days as winter draws near. “But more importantly it’s about hope and despair,” Druckman said. “Especially at this time of year, when the days are getting colder and darker, I think it’s important to acknowledge that and not shy away from the fact that there really is emotional darkness there. But there’s also reassurance that it’s gonna get light again.”

That sense of hope, given the bleak realities of today’s world, resonates particularly powerfully. “There’s a way in which it feels like a sermon,” Druckman added. “It’s something like an offering that’s meant to be kind of a spiritual healing.” With that in mind, the concert’s pieces by Anna Clyne, Ashi Day, Natalie Draper, Jessica French, and Dorothy Hindman are intended to be points of light in the dark ambience of Newton’s Grace Church (on November 16) and Boston’s Emmanuel Church (on November 17)

For Druckman, Clyne’s The Heart of Night paints serene pictures of a starry night sky that comments on the human condition. Ashi Day’s The Evening Darkens Over, scored for treble voices, is similarly peaceful, asking for voices to ring in close harmony in the visceral manner of the indie rock band boygenius. In contrast, Dorothy Hindman’s You Shall Not Go Down places emotional text from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself in the cavernous sonic depths of its tenor-and-basses scoring.

Of the contemporary works, Natalie Draper’s Three Lenten Motets is the most expressly religious. These Psalm settings deal with hope and despair. “The second of the three paints this apocalyptic picture of volcanoes and a windstorm, and God is not in any of these,” Druckman said, adding, “But after it all ends there’s this still small voice. And it’s something that means a lot to me. I find the text extremely beautiful and extremely moving.”

Conductor Holly Druckman. Photo: courtesy of the artist

The program will also include two works by Hildegard von Bingen that reflect Cappella’s continuing efforts to blend early and new music on the same program.

For Druckman, approaching repertoire from both ends of the musical spectrum involves risk and imagination. “You have to approach it with a sense of discovery and a sense of curiosity. And it really gives you the freedom to take certain risks that you might not otherwise feel emboldened to take if you stuck to a more standard repertoire.”

“There are certain kinds of performance practice that carry over as well,” she added. “There’s a sense of composing not according to systems, but according to sounds that feel right. And we’re at a point in history where we’re thinking more freely, you know, outside of that box as well. Or we can. And then, of course, there are stylistic similarities, like people singing without vibrato, singing in different kinds of tuning systems.”

Tackling early and new music head-on is part of Druckman’s familial and intellectual DNA. She grew up in what she calls “a new music family” –she’s the granddaughter of Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Jacob Druckman. After graduating from Columbia University, she went on to study musicology at the New England Conservatory. There, she discovered a love for early music, learning about its history and becoming knowledgeable about technical matters. Eventually she applied for a position helping to create scholarly editions for the British music publisher Boosey & Hawkes.

Yet, throughout her studies, she felt that something was missing. “I felt like, oh, I really miss performing and love doing it,” Druckman remembers. “And that’s when I applied for a second major [in choral conducting].”

Druckman has since established a reputation as a conductor with a wide grasp of repertoire. With her ensemble Carduus, she delves into both early and modern music. And since earning her appointment to the conductorship of Cappella Clausura, which she began earlier this season, Druckman says she feels free to put her talents to full use. “I’m in a really enviable position of getting to work with an already established and really stellar ensemble. With this group I can tackle music projects that have a high level of difficulty,” she said. “There’s no ceiling on that, which is thrilling.”

Among her goals is to turn Cappella into a “very serious player in the Boston early-music-new music scene,” she said. “It’s already like that a little bit. But I wanted to go further, and, in particular, in the new music direction.” Druckman went on to say, “Getting to work with composers is of real personal importance to me. And not just for my personal reasons, it’s just something I truly believe.”

Druckman says that the process is “like introducing audiences to their next favorite music, or their next favorite piece. It’s how composers got known back then, throughout history. So, I want to do that for the same people living today.”

She also does that for well-known composers whose work has often been left unexplored. Francis Poulenc, of course, may need little introduction. But his Un Soir de Neige, which Cappella will perform, does. Based on poems by Paul Éluard, this dark and mysterious set for a cappella choir is filled with hidden references to the lives of those who fought in the Resistance in Nazi-occupied France. Poulenc, who lived in Paris during the occupation, had been a target of Nazi surveillance because of his homosexuality and his support for the Resistance.

“When I work on choral music, the text is something that is as important to me as the music is,” Druckman said. “And I find [the Poulenc] really evocative and striking…. It’s not really surrealism, but that particular — I don’t want to say tongue-in-cheek because it’s more serious — but that element of sometimes delighting in not landing where you’d expect without sacrificing serious emotional import.”

“Initially, I did not realize there was that political connection in the piece,” Druckman added. “Its become especially important at this time. I wonder if I was drawn to it for that reason — that feeling of hopelessness and darkness. It’s something that speaks to our time for sure: a kind of unflinching look at something that’s kind of troubling, or that can be kind of scary.”

“It feels like it might be out of touch to talk about concerts at all in our current political situation,” said Druckman. “I have a love-hate relationship with the now famous Leonard Bernstein quote: “This will be our response to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” I feel that people sometimes use it as a cop-out, a substitute for actually doing the hard work of trying to make the world a better place.”

Still, enticing people to listen, to create shared communal experiences, can be a way of facing that darkness. For Druckman, music can help cast much needed light.

Aaron Keebaugh has been a classical music critic in Boston since 2012. His work has been featured in the Musical Times, Corymbus, Boston Classical Review, Early Music America, and BBC Radio 3. A musicologist, he teaches at North Shore Community College in both Danvers and Lynn.