Experiments in Movement and Lyric Poetry. World Premiere of My New Choral Work.

Dear Poetry and Choral Music Enthusiasts…

Dear Poetry and Choral Music Enthusiasts,

Here is a first look at a piece I wrote for Pro Coro Canada that premiered in February at The Banff Center For The Arts. 

A lot of my work centers around excavating emotional intelligence. In taking the time and care to honor and polish the delicate nuances of human emotion and offer these specificities their own dressing, hues that become them, orchestrations that match their ambiance, choreography that fits their form.

There is a psychologist I once heard speak (Cloe Madanes I believe it was) who researched the connection between how the language we use to describe our emotions, effects our emotions. She found that we essentially end up feeling only as many feelings as we have words for. We will, feel a feeling, try to put our finger on a how to categorize it and actually shift/transform the initial feeling to match what we understand about the word we ultimately land on to categorize it. This means that our vocabulary has the ability to limit our emotional capacity. 

She mentioned in the same talk that most people have about 15 words that they regularly use to describe their emotions. A plethora of unfathomable depth of nuance and possibility, altered and contained to fit into a mere 15 words. 

I have spent many years thinking about this malady. A wellspring of full, overflowing emotions suffocated in hand-me-down clothes that don’t fit, all of their beautiful unique curves filed and sanded, orbiting planets they don’t fell naturally pulled to. A cause of existential dread and a sort of infinite sadness in never feeling seen, not only by others but by ourselves. We lack the vocabulary to see ourselves and therefor to honor ourselves and therefor to honor others in their infinite complexity and nuance. 

As I develop my work and mission as an artist/composer, I am continually drawn to this study and concept. I think music and poetry (and all arts and sciences) have a unique capacity to make fruitful excavations here. 

I’m inspired to make art when I can’t figure out what I’m feeling, what’s happening, what is rising up in me. If I can figure out how to express those risings in a clear statement or a dialogue or in any other way, I will do that, every time. If the thing I’m trying to uncover can be uncovered any other way, I will most definitely do that instead. Abstract excavation is emotionally rigorous and intellectually tedious and I’m only tempted to go there if it can’t be done any other way.

This work, Experiments in Movement and Lyric Poetry is a piece for 12 singers, electronics and choreography. Each singer has a headset mic that triggers various electronic effects throughout the work. The choreography, initially much more complex, had to be understated for the sake of the quick turnaround time/lack of rehearsal time. It was written in a week, during a very fast paced residency and I am very happy to share this piece with you now, a month after it premiered. 

I am extremely grateful to you for continuing to support me on my journey as an artist, composer, musician, and curious human as I attempt to create a space of solace and comfort to a grieving world through my excavations. Always searching for something more useful, more capable of opening the hearts of humans, myself included.

Love,

Hope