For Immediate Release

Anima Mundi Productions offers a prayer for our planet with Mass for the Endangered, a choral music film with animated art at ScienceWorks Museum on Nov. 9th

Anima Mundi Productions is launching the 2025-26 season of their Heart of Humanity concert series with a love letter to our planet. Composer Sarah Kirkland Snider (praised for “An unerring knack for breathtaking beauty” by The New Yorker) calls her Mass for the Endangered “a hymn for the voiceless and the discounted, a requiem for the not-yet-gone” and “a prayer for endangered animals and the imperiled environments in which they live.”

It's coming to the ScienceWorks Museum in Ashland as a film with visuals by animation artist Deborah Johnson. Anima Mundi Productions is going a step further and pairing the 1-hour screening with a special opportunity to participate in a collective art project inspired by the images in the film.

The Story Behind Mass for the Endangered

Commissioned by the Trinity Wall Street Choir as part of their “Mass Re-Imaginings” Project, Kirkland Snider and her longtime collaborator, the poet/artist Nathaniel Bellows, created a Mass for our planet and all the plants and creatures who live here. The subsequent recording by the award-winning British vocal ensemble, Gallicantus, received rapturous reviews upon its release at the height of the Covid Pandemic in the fall of 2020.

“At a time when singers, especially choristers, are the hardest hit musicians, a glorious choral album from composer Sarah Kirkland Snider renewed my faith in humans joining in song for purpose and strength. Mass for the Endangered might be inspired by the traditional Catholic mass but Snider's 21st century twist focuses not on our relationship to God, but instead to the flora and fauna on our planet. With layers of sweet and tangy harmonies, shooting out in radiant beams, Snider must be recognized as one of today's most compelling composers for the human voice.”

- Tom Huizenga, Deceptive Cadence, NPR Classical

A Feast for the Senses

Soon a third collaborator joined the Mass. Animation artist Deborah Johnson took images from Nathaniel Bellows’ poetry and drawings and added her own art in motion, which literally revolves around mandalas, stained glass, and vibrantly styled wildlife.

Chapel for the Endangered: The Public Is Invited to Take Part in the Creativity

Anima Mundi Productions is partnering with award-winning local artist Karen Hanken to offer an art project inspired by the stained glass images of the film; Hanken will guide members of the public in coloring depictions of endangered plants and animals from the Pacific Northwest to create the Chapel for the Endangered, a community art installation in the south wing of the museum. General admission will also include access to the entire museum for the afternoon.

Why ScienceWorks?

Anima Mundi’s theme for the 2025-26 concert season is For Love of Nature, a celebration of our natural world that calls on all of us to be loving stewards of our environment.

Partnering with ScienceWorks Museum was a natural fit for both organizations. For the performing arts-focused Anima Mundi Productions, partnering with ScienceWorks offers opportunities for concert attendees of its nature-themed concerts to learn about environmental sciences and how to be stewards of our natural world. For ScienceWorks, this partnership represents a deeper journey into "STEAM" (Science, Technology, Engineering, ARTS, and Math) programming. The two organizations are also working with a third collaborator, Rogue Climate, to bring high schoolers into the arts and sciences with an extracurricular program that will culminate in a showing of teen artwork at the Museum’s gallery in May.

As Anima Mundi Productions executive director Ethan Gans-Morse describes the collaboration, “Our artistic work fosters compassion, and ScienceWorks awakens curiosity. This partnership is a natural fit!”

DETAILS

Mass for the Endangered
Sunday, November 9th with showings at 2pm and 3pm
ScienceWorks Hands-On Museum | 1500 E. Main St. in Ashland
For more information and for tickets, please call (541) 833-3066 ext. 1 or visit www.HumanityTickets.com

WATCH: The Making of Mass for the Endangered

About the Heart of Humanity Series

Now in its seventh season, Anima Mundi Productions’ annual concert series is dedicated to bringing world-class musicians to Southern Oregon for musical events that turn the concert hall into a space for renewed hope, communal healing, and mutual understanding.