Life After Death

Teddy Abrams (conductor), Ellis Ludwig-Leone (composer), Eliza Bagg (voice) and The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra

Produced by Liquid Music
Oct 23–25, 2026
Ordway Concert Hall

Individual and Concert Member tickets will go on sale in August. Currently, you can purchase a Season Ticket Package, starting at 3 concerts, for the SPCO’s 2026.27 Season.

Step into a world where the veil is at its thinnest. This Halloween season, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra joins forces with “ingenious” (New Yorker) composer Ellis Ludwig-Leone, GRAMMY-winning conductor Teddy Abrams, and "ethereal" (New York Times) vocalist Eliza Bagg for an evening of music that blurs the line between the living and the departed, the physical and the unseen.

The night begins in the hypnotic stillness of Philip Glass’s Satyagraha: Evening Song, before taking a dark, supernatural turn with the US premiere of Ellis Ludwig-Leone’s Hexentanz, or “witch dance.” Inspired by ancient ritual circles designed to summon spirits and heighten the senses.

The program weaves through the mysteriously lush sound of Glass’s meditative Bed from Einstein on the Beach, Maurice Ravel’s seminal work for voice and orchestra Trois poèmes de Mallarmé, and the imaginative contemporary textures of Andrew Norman’s Begin. The concert culminates in the world premiere of Ludwig-Leone’s Threshold, a new work for voice and orchestra. Blending 18th-century Spiritualist texts with the scientific observations of a psychiatrist’s case files, Ludwig-Leone brings the echoes of the past into a startling, resonant present. Taken together, these works will bring you on a journey into the beyond that will haunt you long after the final note.

Program:

Satyagraha: Evening Song
Philip Glass

Hexentanz
Ellis Ludwig-Leone

Bed (from Einstein on the Beach)
Philip Glass

Trois poèmes de Mallarmé
Maurice Ravel

Intermission

Begin
Andrew Norman

Threshold
Ellis Ludwig-Leone

Hexentanz and Threshold were commissioned by The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and Liquid Music with generous support from Tim and Calli Sullivan, Dr. Tom von Sternberg and Eve Parker. Begin was commissioned by Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and first premiered in California in 2019.

About the Artists

Ellis Ludwig-Leone has forged a singular career as both a celebrated contemporary classical composer and the creative force behind the band San Fermin. Lauded by The New Yorker for his “knack for simultaneously expressing beauty and crisis,” Ludwig-Leone (b. 1989) writes music that balances warm, naturalistic textures with moments of thorny complexity, paying special attention to the psychological intersection of wonder and dread.

Since coming to international attention with San Fermin’s 2013 debut, he has maintained a prolific dual practice, touring extensively while composing numerous works for the stage and concert hall. In addition to five studio albums with the band, his discography includes two acclaimed albums of chamber music, featuring collaborations with world-class ensembles such as the Attacca Quartet. His compositions have been performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, the BBC Concert Orchestra, and the New York City Ballet, with recordings appearing on Sony Classical, New Amsterdam, and Better Company Records. ​​His expansive stage and chamber output includes the dance-driven opera The Night Falls, praised by The New Yorker for its “ingenious, gorgeous score” and named one of The New York Times’ Best Dance Performances of 2023. A recipient of residencies from MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Banff Centre for the Arts, Ludwig-Leone was honored as the recipient of the 2025 Ellis-Beauregard Composer Award.

Eliza Bagg is an experimental vocalist and composer. She is known for her “ethereal” aesthetic (New York Times), “luminous sound” (New York Times) and “gossamer” singing (New Yorker), along with a unique performance and improvisational practice. Bagg has performed as a soloist around the globe, with a wide-ranging career that includes chamber music at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, motets by John Zorn at Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Meredith Monk’s Atlas with the LA Philharmonic, and premieres by Ted Hearne at Carnegie Hall and Chaya Czernowin at Walt Disney Concert Hall. She has sung lead roles in new operas with the Komische Oper Berlin, Philadelphia Opera, The Industry, and the Prototype Festival, and is a member of GRAMMY-winning vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth.

Bagg is a frequent guest soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and has sung as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, and North Carolina Symphony. She has collaborated closely with musicians and ensembles such as Nico Muhly, Pekka Kuusisto, Attacca String Quartet, Claire Chase, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Lorelei Ensemble, Nadia Sirota, Sofia Jernberg, Wild Up, and A Far Cry, among many others. Frequently developing and performing new work by composers like Ted Hearne, Ellen Reid, Angelica Négron, Caroline Shaw, Gabriel Kahane, and John Zorn, Bagg is a renowned collaborator and creative contributor.

Bagg’s compositional work integrates mainstream, contemporary aesthetics with classical languages, historical forms, and an avant-garde sensibility, often using pop production and electronic processing to explore the “valley between authenticity and artifice” (The Guardian). Dubbed an “electro-pop alien” by NPR, Bagg tours globally under the artist name Lisel and has released three solo albums, including the "chrome-tinted harmonies...[and] intricate latticeworks" (Bandcamp Daily) of her critically acclaimed piece Patterns For Auto-Tuned Voices And Delay. She has been in residence as a composer at Yaddo and Avaloch Farm, and has created new opera-theatre performances for REDCAT's New Original Works Festival and Wild Up’s Endless Season. She has performed her innovative work for processed voice at institutions such as Lincoln Center, Big Ears Festival, Birds of Paradise Festival, Musica Festival Strasbourg, De Doelen, Public Records, and the Bemis Center, among others.

Grammy Award-winning conductor-composer Teddy Abrams is set to embark on his twelfth season as Music Director of the Louisville Orchestra (LO), where he has been the galvanizing force behind the ensemble’s extraordinary artistic renewal and innovative social impact. From next September, he will also serve as Artistic and Executive Director of California’s Ojai Music Festival. He was chosen as Musical America’s 2022 Conductor of the Year, and his work has been profiled by CBS Sunday Morning, PBS NewsHour, NPR, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, which hails him as a “maestro of the people” who “has embedded himself in his community, breaking the mold of modern conductors.”

Beyond Louisville, Abrams has conducted the Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Cincinnati, Houston, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, National, Vancouver, and Phoenix Symphonies; the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; the Buffalo and Los Angeles Philharmonics; Carnegie Hall’s NYO2; and the Minnesota, Florida, and Sarasota Orchestras, all in North America, as well as the Helsinki and Luxembourg Philharmonics and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in Europe. In the 2025-26 season, he makes debuts with the Atlanta Symphony, Nashville Symphony, Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, and London’s BBC Symphony Orchestra, while also serving as the Aspen Institute Arts Program’s 2025-26 Harman/Eisner Artist-in-Residence.

In Kentucky, Abrams’s manifold achievements include the Louisville Orchestra Creators Corps, a trailblazing initiative that provides three composers with exposure, a salary, local housing, health benefits, and dedicated workspaces; the In Harmony Tour, a grand-scale multi-season community-building project funded by the Commonwealth of Kentucky; and adventurous collaborations with artists who range from mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile to rapper Jack Harlow, My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James, singer-songwriter Storm Large, and musician-activist Jecorey “1200” Arthur, with whom Abrams founded the Louisville Orchestra Rap School.

Abrams is an award-winning composer, whose recent compositions for the Louisville Orchestra include a piano concerto for Yuja Wang, which they recorded for Deutsche Grammophon’s The American Project, winning the pianist and himself a Grammy Award; Mammoth, premiered with Yo-Yo Ma and Davóne Tines at Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave National Park; and The Greatest: Muhammad Ali, a rap opera that premiered with Jecorey Arthur in the title role. Abrams is now at work on the upcoming Broadway musical ALI and, as part of the Emerson Collective Fellowship, an orchestral representation of Kentucky’s history and culture. Abrams’s recording of his piano collection Preludes was released on New Amsterdam Records in 2025.