Majel Connery with Felix Fan, Live at the Senger House October 14, 2025

About the performance
Elderflora is an oratorio on the life and death of a tree. Narrated from the tree’s perspective, Elderflora invites us on a journey inside the mind of nature, experiencing the tree’s thoughts and feelings in vivid detail.

Elderflora blends old sounds with new technology, with snatches of madrigals and hymns blowing through electronic soundscapes like wind through leaves. Structured as a series of 10 musical portraits, each movement represents a significant moment in the life of the tree: birth by fire, the first taste of water, and nature’s most dangerous proposition: becoming a mother.

The Rivers are our Brothers is an electronic song cycle on ecological responsibility, told from the point of view of the land. Based on a letter from Chief Seattle that urges us to think of the earth as kin, the songs take a first-person view of nature: rocks sing about their mothers, and snowflakes tell about their hearts of sand.

About the artists:
Majel Connery (vocals, keyboard, and synthesizer) is a composer, performer, podcaster and musicologist. Her voice has been called “superb” by the New York Times and her music “thoroughly Schubertian” by the Wall Street Journal. She has appeared on Radiolab, Kennedy Center Live, and New Sounds radio. Connery is the host and producer of A Music of Their Own, an interview podcast on women in music on NPR. Connery has taught at UC Berkeley, Stanford and Princeton, and will begin working with Musicambia teaching songwriting in prisons this fall. https://www.majelconnery.com/

Felix Fan (cello) has performed with Yo-Yo Ma, Gil Shaham and Janos Starker in venues such as Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, Musikverein and Royal Festival Hall. Fan's interest in contemporary music has led to collaborations with today's leading composers including George Crumb, Tan Dun, Hans Werner Henze, Oliver Knussen, Kaija Saariaho and Charles Wuorinen. He appears frequently as a solo artist and with FLUX Quartet. https://www.felixfan.org/

About the Venue:
The Senger House is a private residence in Berkeley, California, owned by Michael and Andrea Scharff and designed by architect Bernard Maybeck in 1907 for Henry Senger. Majel and Felix will perform in the gracious living room, with its original redwood paneled walls, gold accents, and ornate fireplace. For more information about this historic home, visit Sengerhouse.com