The Secret Letter re-imagines a program of the same name performed by Cantus in the spring of 2025, weaving music together with excerpts from letters by Marcus Aurelius, Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and others. These interludes offer fleeting access to private moments of longing, devotion, and vulnerability, while the surrounding music expands and amplifies their emotional terrain, carrying forward their tension, tenderness, restraint, and release. The Secret Letter bears witness and celebrates queer love that has always existed—persistent, imaginative, and worthy of song—and that even in secrecy, has found ways to speak, to sing, and to survive.
Cantus
Release date: 14th August 2026
Catalogue number: SIGCD1024
Barcode: 635212102428
[1] Yhinx – Abbie Betinis
[2] Canto a Eleggua – Anon, arr. Arlety Valdés; Yudelkis Lafuente
[3] Love Is… – Libby Larsen
[4] Interlude: Marcus Aurelius to Marcus Fronto
[5] Bésame Mucho – Consuelito Velázquez arr. José Galván
[6] Interlude: Excerpt from De Profundis
[7] Figure humaine, Cantate pour double chœur mixte a cappella, FP. 120: Le jour m’étonne et la nuit me fait peur – Francis Poulenc
[8] A Source of Light: I. On the Shoulders of Giants – Mohammed Fairouz
[9] Interlude: Walt Whitman to Peter Doyle, August 21, 1869 – Walt Whitman
[10] We Two: IV. Not Heat Flames Up and Consumes – Steven Sametz
[11] Lightyears to Lebanon – Saunder Choi
[12] Interlude: Emily Dickinson to Susan Gilbert, Summer 1852 – Emily Dickinson
[13] Before Spring – Mari Esabel Valverde
[14] 3 Sbory mužské (3 Male Partsongs), JW IV/19: I. Loučení – Leoš Janáček
[15] Blackbird (arr. Chris Foss) – John Lennon, Paul McCartney
[16] Interlude: To the One I Once Was (or Might Have Been) – Rod Kelly Hines
[17] We Kiss in a Shadow (from The King & I) (Arr. for ensemble by Chris Foss) – Richard Rodgers