Sin-Eater

David T. Little’s newest work, a grotesquerie, written for choir and string quartet. With The Crossing and Bergamot Quartet.

A drawing of a goat in three-quarter profile, with a blue background
  • Date October 15, 2023
  • Time 3:00 PM
  • Location Harold Prince Theater (Annenberg Center), Philadelphia, PA

David T. Little describes Sin-Eater as a “work of ritual music-theatre for choir and string quartet, exploring the nature of power in western civilization through its connection to food and consumption.” The idea of the sin-eater derives from Welsh folklore in which a person of low class would be paid to take on the sins of a person of a higher class by way of consuming a loaf of bread and bowl of beer, which had ritually absorbed the wealthier person’s sins in a kind of “inverted Eucharist in which the rich exploit the poor for spiritual gain.”

In the broad, dramatic strokes of a grand oratorio for choir and string quartet, David’s new work asks the question, “Who are our sin-eaters today, sacrificing for the comforts of others?”

Tickets: $42 – Buy Tickets