This deeply affecting program is filled with haunting melodies and jovial folk songs from around the world and features The Formosa Quartet, Art of élan’s first ever ensemble-in-residence. Selections include Prayer of St. Gregory by Alan Hovhaness, Benjamin Britten’s Folk Songs for tenor and harp, and Joaquin Turina’s La oracion del torero (The Bullfighter’s Prayer)–an impressionistic ode to Spanish culture. A moving highlight will be the West Coast premiere of Avner Dorman’s Prayer for the Innocents, written for double string quartet and dedicated to the memory of the children who perished in the 2004 attack on a school in Beslan, Russia.