Hear three thoughtful musical tales featuring a woman’s voice: 'The Grey Land', a mono-opera by Joseph C. Phillips Jr. (2018), 'A Cockroach's Tarantella,' for string quartet, electronics, and narrator by Du Yun (2006/2019) and 'The Anchoress,' a monodrama by David Ludwig (2018.) Listen to portions of each of these long-form works.
Listen to the “Mixed music” by Joseph C. Phillips Jr. and his ensemble Numinous with The Grey Land – a work about being Black in America. The libretto, written by Phillips, chronicles a single Black mother and her son and uses additional text from Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, author Isaac Butler, Abolitionist Frederick Douglas, and from Mothers of the Movement, founded in 2013 by Black mothers. Hear the choral lament, “The People Get Tired of Dying” along with “The Sunken Place,” a concept built on “the metaphor for the system that is suppressing the freedom of Black people” (Jordan Peele) used by Peele in his film Get Out.
Hold on to your Kafka and hear a portion of A Cockroach’s Tarantella, by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Du Yun, a work for string quartet, electronics, and narrator (the composer.) Using the point-of-view of a pregnant cockroach who longs to become human in the next life and muses on what it is to be pregnant out of love, Du Yun’s text manages to be playful and ponderous, exploring societal and gender expectations, and questions the spectrum of feminism.
Then, listen to selections from the monodrama by David Serkin Ludwig and poet Katie Ford, The Anchoress, about isolation and the restricted number of places afforded to women in society. Featuring soprano Hyunah Yu, modern sax quartet PRISM, with renaissance band Piffaro, the work “explores struggles with faith, alienation, gender, and social power through the imagined person of a Medieval anchorite.” (Liner notes, PRISM Quartet.) These medieval Christians (mostly women) were thought to become “living saints” by sequestering themselves in permanently sealed “anchorholds” (cells) attached to churches. Townspeople would travel to her cell to seek wisdom through her one small window, and in this way she would remain in isolation until her passing. -Caryn Havlik
Program #4431, Three Musical Tales (First Aired 11/19/2020)
ARTIST: Hyunah Yu, soprano; PRISM; Piffaro
WORK: David Ludwig: The Anchoress, excerpt [1:00]
RECORDING: The Anchoress
SOURCE: XAS Recordings 110
INFO: prismquartet.com | available at Amazon.com, AppleMusic
ARTIST: Rebecca L Hargrove, soprano; Joseph C. Phillips Jr. and Numinous
WORK: Joseph C. Phillips Jr.: The People Get Tired of Dying [3:37]
RECORDING: The Grey Land
SOURCE: New Amsterdam Records
INFO: numinous.bandcamp.com | newamrecords.com
ARTIST: Rebecca L Hargrove, soprano; Joseph C. Phillips Jr. and Numinous
WORK: Joseph C. Phillips Jr.: Don't [3:44]
RECORDING: The Grey Land
SOURCE: New Amsterdam Records
INFO: numinous.bandcamp.com | newamrecords.com
ARTIST: Rebecca L Hargrove, soprano; Joseph C. Phillips Jr. and Numinous
WORK: Joseph C. Phillips Jr.: Agnus Bey [2:22]
RECORDING: The Grey Land
SOURCE: New Amsterdam Records
INFO: numinous.bandcamp.com | newamrecords.com
ARTIST: Rebecca L Hargrove, soprano; Joseph C. Phillips Jr. and Numinous
WORK: Joseph C. Phillips Jr.: Liberty Bell [6:03]
RECORDING: The Grey Land
SOURCE: New Amsterdam Records
INFO: numinous.bandcamp.com | newamrecords.com
ARTIST: Rebecca L Hargrove, soprano; Joseph C. Phillips Jr. and Numinous
WORK: Joseph C. Phillips Jr.: The Sunken Place [4:09]
RECORDING: The Grey Land
SOURCE: New Amsterdam Records
INFO: numinous.bandcamp.com | newamrecords.com
ARTIST: Hyunah Yu, soprano; PRISM; Piffaro
WORK: David Ludwig: The Anchoress, I. What Is My Life [3:53]
RECORDING: The Anchoress
SOURCE: XAS Recordings 110
INFO: prismquartet.com | available at Amazon.com, AppleMusic
ARTIST: Hyunah Yu, soprano; PRISM; Piffaro
WORK: David Ludwig: The Anchoress, III. What Are We to Make of Visions Lit [4:22]
RECORDING: The Anchoress
SOURCE: XAS Recordings 110
INFO: prismquartet.com | available at Amazon.com, AppleMusic
ARTIST: Hyunah Yu, soprano; PRISM; Piffaro
WORK: David Ludwig: The Anchoress, VI. A Woman of the Village [1:50]
RECORDING: The Anchoress
SOURCE: XAS Recordings 110
INFO: prismquartet.com | available at Amazon.com, AppleMusic
ARTIST: Hyunah Yu, soprano; PRISM; Piffaro
WORK: David Ludwig: The Anchoress, VIII. When I Woke Up Sighing [5:02]
RECORDING: The Anchoress
SOURCE: XAS Recordings 110
INFO: prismquartet.com | available at Amazon.com, AppleMusic
ARTIST: Du Yun, JACK Quartet
WORK: Du Yun: A Cockroach's Tarantella [11:58]
RECORDING: A Cockroach's Tarantella
SOURCE: Modern Sky Records
INFO: duyun.bandcamp.com