I’m Through Accepting Limits
collage by me in 2020
So, here I am, two days post-concert—my directorial debut with my professional soprano-alto choir Da Capo—and I can’t believe it’s done. The concert was very well-attended and I felt everyone’s love and appreciation for the choir, our program, and for me. I’m really happy.
Music is a language that has very different meanings for everyone. From a programatic standpoint, I want the music I present to be carefully thought out and intentional. I want it to have a purpose and to say something. I want it to spark conversations, to make people heal and understand others, to make people think, feel something beyond the “wow, it’s so beautiful” or the “wow, it’s so good” (not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course).
This program is very special to me in that I wanted to present one that centered immigrant and refugee voices. Months of dreaming, planning, researching, studying, rethinking; the seemingly millions of notes written and given; the five days of rehearsals that was made up of equal parts mess and beauty, all culminated in one evening. A Lebanese friend of a friend told me how they were left in tears when we began the program with the haunting arrangement of Samih Choukeir’s “Lao Rahal Soti” by Shireen Abu-Kahder, who personally dedicated her arrangement to the Palestinian ongoing struggle for freedom and dignity. The husband of a singer of one our ensembles, whose parents fled China to seek refuge in Brazil, sought me out to tell me how the program was a meditative experience for him—that it gave him a glimpse of how his parents could have felt as they went through life as refugees. One of my singers thanked me for the beautiful, purposeful, intentional music I have programmed, while another told me she learned so much about the immigrant experience. She told me how it broke her heart to hear how the feelings of “not belonging” continue to live on no matter the length of time one spends trying to “belong” in their new country.
Artistically, I wanted to challenge my singers to sing in different non-Western languages, to perform works in various modes and sound worlds that confused their classically-trained ears and vocal mechanism, to learn music that was rhythmically and tonally difficult, to push themselves out of their comfort zones by having them sing in mixed formation. I envisioned myself to be one of and with them, so I was always going to be part of the singer semi-circle and not in front of them conducting. That proved to be very difficult, so I decided to sing and conduct from where I was. It turned out to be a much better plan because that was a step closer to a much bigger dream of mine anyway.
But that’s a story for another time. For now, enjoy some pictures and excerpts from last night!
