Art-Poem-Music : Sirarpi Heghinian Walzer, artist
Elizabeth Kirschner, poet
Pamela J. Marshall, composer
Press Release January 15, 2008
Contact: Pamela Marshall pmarshall [ at ] spindrift.com
Art-Poem-Music: Body and Soul --
chamber music concert and art exhibition
The Art-Poem-Music Project presents a concert on Friday February 29 at 8:00pm at the 51 Walden Performing Arts Center, Concord, MA.
Art-Poem-Music is a full-circle collaborative project between three local artists: Pamela Marshall, composer, Elizabeth Kirschner, poet and Sirarpi Heghinian-Walzer, visual artist. Art-Poem-Music presents its second solo art exhibition by Walzer for the month of February and a concert of music by Pamela Marshall, which includes songs inspired by Walzer's art and Kirschner's poetry. Walzer's art exhibition, the set of poems by Kirschner, and the song cycle by Marshall are all titled Body and Soul. The first music from the project for mezzo and chamber ensemble was presented last year; this winter's concert features Body and Soul Volume 2 for soprano, flute, cello, and piano.
Body and Soul and other songs
Soprano Jodi Hitzhusen will be joined by Susan Jackson, flute, Jing Li, cello, and Karen Sauer, piano for three songs from Body and Soul: The Lost Roots, O Trill, and Mulched by Moonlight. Walzer's dramatic art and Kirschner's poems freely combine human and nature imagery. The poems organically combine images of death and sadness with transformation and transcendence and a remaking of oneself--ideas and images that came to Kirschner as she studied Walzer's paintings and collages.
Ms. Hitzhusen and Ms. Sauer will perform Marshall's Remember the Old Songs, which are a quirky, rhapsodic reminiscence for piano and voice of favorite songs from her childhood. You might guess which tunes from these titles: Shenandoah Echo, Juanita and Caroline, and Whistling Dixie. Cellist Jing Li and Ms. Sauer will play Marshall's Elusive Sleep for cello and piano.
Poetry-Inspired solos for woodwinds
The concert includes several pieces for solo woodwinds. Each piece is Marshall's musical interpretation of poetic moments, sometimes whole poems, sometimes single lines. Her melodies soar and dance, making a rich, rhapsodic texture. Readings of the poems complement the performances.
Concord Orchestra principal oboist Veronica Kenney, who premiered Marshall's Enchanted in 2006, will play Beyond the Storm. The music depicts the poem "La Mer" by Oscar Wilde. Susan Jackson, principal flutist with the Concord Orchestra, will play High Flight. This music conveys the soaring ideas of the same-named poem by John Gillespie Magee. This poem, well known to aviators, describes the transcendent experience of flying high above the clouds.
Clarinetist Monica Fay Duncan, performer and teacher from Newburyport, will play Summer Into Winter, inspired by the seasonal images of Shakespeare's Sonnet #5. Concord Orchestra principal bassoonist Bill Moran will premiere two new pieces: Unabashed Promotion, after "On the Cackling of a Hen" by John Bunyan, and "I Am the Wind", after the poem by Zoe Akins.
The Concord Chamber Ensemble, conducted by Alan Yost, will play Choir Boxes by guest composer Stephen Tramontozzi. The two composers grew up in Massachusetts and played in the same youth orchestras in high school. Mr. Tramontozzi now plays double bass in the San Francisco Symphony.
Art by Heghinian-Walzer
In connection with the concert, Body and Soul art exhibition by Sirarpi Heghinian-Walzer on display at 51 Walden from February 1 - March 3, 2008. Using oils and acrylics, inks, and pastels, Sirarpi draws, scrawls, scrapes, and paints on canvas and wood surfaces that are rich in layers of handmade and recycled papers, fabric, wood powder, sand, and other natural materials. Her suggestive abstract figurative work springs from meditations on nature, or childhood memories distilled into a single dramatic moment. In several of her paintings, an abstracted female figure prevails within an abiding sense of solitude. In Kirschner's texts, set to music, you'll hear a poet's story of these figures.
After the concert and exhibition, the Art-Poem-Music collaboration will continue. Walzer and Kirschner are planning a book of the 22 poems while Marshall plans to set all the poems to music and produce a CD.
Concert details
The concert Art-Poem-Music: Body and Soul takes place Friday February 29, 2008 at 8:00pm at the 51 Walden Performing Arts Center, Concord, MA 01742. Suggested donation $15, students/children free. For reservations, call Pamela at 781-862-0884 or Sirarpi at 781-307-7306. The concert is supported in part by the Concord Cultural Council and Lexington Council for the Arts, local agencies supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency. Learn more at www.spindrift.com.
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About the Art-Poem-Music project
About artist Sirarpi Heghinian-Walzer
About poet Elizabeth Kirschner
