The multiphonic singers of Tibet’s Drepung Loseling Monastery, whose sellout performances in Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center received national acclaim, will perform “Sacred Music Sacred Dance for World Healing” Thursday, Feb. 27 at 7:30 p.m. in the Center for Faith and Life, as part of a five-day ceremony at Luther College.
Tickets for the performance are on sale at the Luther College Box Office, telephone (563) 387-1357, open 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday. Ticket price is $7 for adults, $5 for children under 12 years old.
The performance features multiphonic singing, where the monks simultaneously intone three notes of a chord.
The Drepung Loseling monks are particularly renowned for this unique singing.
They also utilize traditional instruments such as 10-feet long dungchen trumpets, drums, bells, cymbals and gyaling horns. Rich brocade costumes and masked dances, such as the “Dance of the Sacred Snow Lion,” add to the exotic splendor.
On past tours the monks have performed with Kitaro, Paul Simon, Philip Glass, Eddie Brickell, Natalie Merchant, Patti Smith, the Beastie Boys and the Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart. In addition, two of their recordings achieved top ten listings on the New Age charts.
In 1997, the Drepung Loseling monks participated in Hollywood’s two major movies on Tibet. Their music was featured on the Golden Globe-nominated soundtrack of the film, “Seven Years in Tibet,” starring Brad Pitt, and they performed with Philip Glass in Lincoln Center, New York, in the live presentation of his award winning score to Martin Scorsese’s film “Kundun.”
The opening ceremony of the monks’ five-day residency at Luther begins with “The Mystical Arts of Tibet: Mandala Sand Painting, Healing the Earth” at 10 a.m. in the Center for the Arts lobby.
Beginning with about 30 minutes of chants, music and possibly dance, the monks will begin to construct a mandala sand painting by drawing the line design for the mandala. This process alone takes about three hours to complete.
From all the artistic traditions of Tantric Buddhism, that of painting with colored sand ranks as one of the most unique and exquisite.
Millions of grains of sand are painstakingly laid into place on a flat platform over a period of days to form the image of a mandala.
To date the monks have created mandala sand paintings in more than 50 U.S. museums, generally breaking all attendance records.
Traditionally most sand mandalas are destroyed shortly after their completion. This is done as a metaphor of the impermanence of life.
The closing ceremony will last approximately an hour and will be held at 12:15 Saturday, March 1, beginning at the Center for the Arts lobby and traveling to the Upper Iowa River that adjoins Luther’s campus to complete the ceremony.
From there, dispersal of the sand will take about 30 minutes. Some of the sand is distributed to people attending the ceremony, the remainder ceremonially poured into the Upper Iowa River.
The waters then carry the healing blessing to the ocean, where it spreads throughout the world for planetary healing.
The tour has three basic purposes: to make a contribution to world healing and peace movements; to generate a greater awareness of the endangered Tibetan civilization; and to raise support for its refugee community in India.
This event is sponsored by Luther SAC Diversity.
