Posted May 30, 2026
By Jonathan Raabe
On Saturday, May 30, three Colorado choirs share one stage for the centerpiece of the inaugural Colorado New Music Festival — the world premiere of The Bird of Vision, a new work by Terry Schlenker commissioned by Ars Nova Singers in celebration of our 40th anniversary.
Schlenker is a familiar name to anyone who has followed Colorado choral music. His works are recorded, published, and broadcast regularly on Colorado Public Radio and National Public Radio, with features on programs including Colorado Matters, Colorado Spotlight, Sacred Classics, and Sound Currents. His music has been performed at the conventions of Chorus America and the American Choral Directors Association, the International Festival of GALA Choruses, and the National Choral Festival. But for many, the depth of his story only comes into focus when you learn that the composer shaping some of the most personal moments in our concert hall is also one of the most accomplished embryologists in the world.
Two careers, one voice
Terry Schlenker grew up in a farming family on the Great Plains of North Dakota, where an early fascination with the piano led him — somewhat improbably for a farm boy — to begin composing music at the age of twelve. He went on to study composition at the University of North Dakota and earn his Master of Arts in Composition from the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music. He is an active choral singer himself, performing as a second bass with ensembles including Ars Nova Singers, St. Martin’s Chamber Choir, Santa Fe Desert Chorale, and Kantorei. Singing in the lower voices, he frequently features them in his own compositions.
In parallel — and full-time, for most of his adult life — Schlenker is a clinical embryologist. He is the founding embryologist and first laboratory director of the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine (CCRM), one of the world’s most successful in vitro fertilization programs, which has since expanded into a network of nineteen clinics across North America. He continues to work part-time as a clinical embryologist and serves as an embryo and embryologist advocate and consultant.
For Schlenker, in his own words, composition is not an esoteric intellectual exercise but “a means of articulating beauty, expressing his deepest self, and forging an emotional and spiritual connection for himself, performers, and listeners alike.” The bridge between his two lives — one shaping new beginnings in a lab, one shaping the music that marks them — is exactly that.
The commission
The story of The Bird of Vision begins, characteristically, in the middle of something else.
“When setting poetry to music, I’m often drawn to poetry that either reflects the exhilaration of life or the inevitability of our final transition. At the moment that Tom contacted me, I had just started work on a piece that spoke of the latter.”
That piece was a setting of a poem by the 13th-century Sufi mystic Jalāl al-Dīn Rumi — a verse that, in Schlenker’s words, “sees death as a joyous reunion of the human soul with the divine.” The image at its heart is a bird, caged, longing to be set free, yearning to escape the physical constraints of the material world.
When Ars Nova Artistic Director Tom Morgan outlined what he was looking for in a commission, Schlenker had a thought.
“I told him I would show him the piece when completed, and if he didn’t like it, I’d write another. When I presented it to Tom, he said, ‘This is the piece.'”
The piece
The Bird of Vision is the only work on Saturday’s program performed by all three choirs together — Ars Nova Singers, Kantorei, and St. Martin’s Chamber Choir, joining as a single ensemble of more than sixty voices. Tom Morgan conducts, with two soloists drawn from across the festival: soprano McKenzie Laun of St. Martin’s Chamber Choir and tenor Seth O’Kegley of Kantorei.
This is, in fact, the second Schlenker premiere on the program. Earlier in the evening, Kantorei performs his Green Pastures, Still Waters, a setting of Psalm 23 written in memory of his mother. Kantorei premiered that work in March 2025. Joel Rinsema, Kantorei’s Artistic Director, has said the piece deserved to be heard more — and we agree.
In his own words
Terry Schlenker on the commission, the Rumi text, and the bird that came to him before the call.
Hear it Saturday
RubyGLOW: Colorado New Music Festival
Saturday, May 30, 2026 · 7:30 PM
Central Presbyterian Church · 1660 N Sherman St, Denver
Tickets: $15–$45 · use code GLOW10 for 10% off
Explore more of Terry Schlenker’s catalog at terryschlenker.com.