Mending Wall
World Premiere
Co-Presented by
Bryn Mawr College Performing Arts Series
and PRISM Quartet, Inc.
March 21, 8 PM
March 22, 3 PM
Bryn Mawr College
Goodhart Hall, McPherson Auditorium
150 N. Merion Ave. | Bryn Mawr, PA
Co-Presented by
Roulette and PRISM Quartet, Inc.
|
|
|
| This March, the PRISM Quartet celebrates its 35th anniversary season with Mending Wall, arguably its most ambitious project.
Named after the 1914 poem by Robert Frost, Mending Wall is a fully staged concert exploring the meaning of walls in our world by giving musical form to questions about identity, community, division, and freedom. Soprano Tony Arnold and pianist Arturo O’Farrill join the PRISM Quartet in world premiere performances of works by four visionary composers—Martin Bresnick, George Lewis, Juri Seo, and O’Farrill—who take inspiration from poetry by Frost, Keorapetse Kgositsile, Waly Salomão, and Guillermo Gómez-Peña. Mending Wall is directed by Jorinde Keesmaat with lighting design by Aaron Copp.
|
|
| “Walls are a foundational part of our world: they have mythical and poetic resonance, but also material consequences,” noted Matthew Levy, executive and co-artistic director of the PRISM Quartet. “The project began as a response to the idea of a wall as a dehumanizing force. Although America’s current zeal for wall-building has counterparts throughout history and across the globe, it represents a specific failure of imagination. As artists, we’re called to build another kind of structure: a collaborative experiment that restores mystery, complexity, and generosity to our encounters with one another. Mending Wall amplifies a range of musical and poetic voices; Our hope is that the project will illuminate and help us to confront and mend fractures in our human community.” |
|
|
Composers George Lewis, Arturo O’Farrill, Juri Seo, and Martin Bresnick
|
|
| Martin Bresnick’s commission, Mending Time, is inspired by the contradictions in Frost’s poem “Mending Wall,” in which two neighbors meet yearly to rebuild the structure separating their farms. Bresnick writes, “According to Frost we are trapped and doomed by fences to eternal contact and inevitable alienation. But what if the walls between us were made of music?”
In Where Her Eye Sits, George Lewis set texts examining the legacy of Apartheid by the late South African poet and activist Keorapetse Kgositsile. The piece joins PRISM and soprano Tony Arnold “to link a coloratura’s sonic sensibility with the saxophone’s evocation of South African popular music via mbube-like orchestration.”
Juri Seo‘s work, Unsung Lullaby, is inspired by Algaravi: Echo Chamber, a volume of poetry by Syrian-Brazilian writer Waly Salomão that explores the dual meaning of “echo chamber”— the figurative connotation that’s ubiquitous in our politics/media, and its older (and literal) meaning, a walled space that repeats, amplifies, and distorts sounds.
Arturo O’Farrill’s Something to declare? (yeah, fuck your wall) is based on “Freefalling Toward a Borderless Future” by Guillermo Gomez Peña and son jarocho, a Mexican song form with a lead trovador voice supported by jaranas (guitar-like instruments), which PRISM’s saxophones approximate. His piece draws upon the rich political/cultural underpinnings of Fandango Fronterizo, an annual festival on both sides of the San Diego/Tijuana border fence.
We invite you to visit the Mending Wall Website to learn more about the project. The site includes artist statements from our stage director and composers, information about Mending Wall poets, a project blog, ticketing links, and much more. |
|
 |
|
Photo by Ara Howrani
|
|
| Hailed by Chamber Music magazine for “pioneering achievements of the highest order,” the PRISM Quartet has performed in Carnegie Hall on the Making Music Series, in Alice Tully Hall with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and throughout Latin America, China, and Russia under the auspices of the United States Information Agency and USArtists International. PRISM has also been presented to critical acclaim as soloists with the Detroit Symphony and Cleveland Orchestra, and conducted residencies at the nation’s leading conservatories, including the Curtis Institute of Music and the Oberlin Conservatory. Two-time recipients of the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, PRISM has commissioned nearly 300 works, many by internationally celebrated composers, including Pulitzer Prize-winners Julia Wolfe, William Bolcom, Jennifer Higdon, Zhou Long, and Bernard Rands; MacArthur “Genius” Award recipients Tyshawn Sorey, Bright Sheng, and Miguel Zenón; and United States Artists Fellow Susie Ibarra. PRISM’s discography includes releases on Albany, ECM, innova, Koch, Naxos, BMOP/Sound, New Dynamic, New Focus, and its own label, XAS Records. The Fifth Century, PRISM’s ECM recording with The Crossing under Donald Nally, was awarded a 2018 Grammy for Best Choral Performance. In 2016, PRISM was named by its alma mater, the University of Michigan, as the first recipient of the Christopher Kendall Award in recognition of its work in “collaboration, entrepreneurship, and community engagement.” The PRISM Quartet plays Selmer saxophones and mouthpieces exclusively. PRISM Quartet members are Timothy McAllister, Zachary Shemon, Matthew Levy, and Taimur Sullivan. |
|
|
|
