Colloquy With God
Director and Editor: Mark DeChiazza
Director of Photography: Mark Andrew
Composer: Richard Rodney Bennett
Performer: Harper Altschul
This music video for New York Polyphony made its debut on September 5, 2013 as a First Watch Feature on NPR Music.
Richard Rodney Bennett composed A Colloquy with God for New York Polyphony, making music of a deathbed prayer—a poem by Sir Thomas Browne; only months later Bennett himself died.
In DeChiazza's film short, a child exists within a closed blank room, that contains a sense of waiting or imminence. The bed becomes a place of unending restlessness, host to the contradictions of falling and flying, danger and safety, void and light.
Famed vocal quartet New York Polyphony commissioned the creation of a film of Sir Richard Rodney Bennett's last composition as a memorial tribute to the composer. Film directed and edited by Mark DeChiazza.