An Unfinished Life Premiere

I am a huge fan of Canadian 'classical' music and was looking forward to the premiere of Brian Cherney's oratorio, An Unfinished Life, last week at Metropolitan United. Unfortunately much seemed to conspire against this event: errors (e.g., labeling Dutch as German)
in the already poorly laid out concert programme, a cell phone ringing during the CBC recording of this (!!), a sense of underrehearsal (it was only composed this summer) or at least hesitancy or nonconfidence, and worst of all, the sound set up made hearing the narration by Marilyn Lightstone completely unintelligible. The audience was restless, several walked out before the midpoint, and it became something to sit through out of politeness. You might suggest that this modern classical piece was too challenging or deep for me to understand: after over 30 years of singing, I feel comfortable forming opinions about choral music. I'm not Jewish and didn't get the profundity of the piece? Just finished teaching an in-depth and emotional unit on the Holocaust: I don't think I am uneducated in this area. I just felt there was a disconnect between the music and the selected text, and it is hard to make a connection to cacophony. Aside from the redemption at the end of the borrowed Bach motif, I felt jarred and lost rather than moved and drawn into the life of Etty Hillesum. I would like to give this Soundstreams Canada commission another chance one day; maybe the gods were conspiring against this premiere. But I did find the evening unsatisfying: the advertised 'works by Jewish composers of the Renaissance' amounted to psalms set to music by Palestrina and Lassus (whom I understood to be very Christian) and the only Jewish composer represented was Solomon Rossi (1570-1630), of whom I had never heard, so I was interested to learn something there. So, alack, no raves here, but hope for a better experience next time.