The project for this residency is Songs for Good Friday; a collaborative performance piece and series of songs of lament. Written for voice, choir, and samples, the songs will be loosely improvised, with an overall theme of grief and the process of purification. Built on traditional song structure and drone, the piece will reference the traditions of keening, the Irish wake and moirology.
I plan to compose a series of seven songs, totaling thirty minutes, to be performed in collaboration with willing participants, especially women in Tinos (particularly older women if possible). The songs will remain open in form and structure, so that the pieces can take their own shape once interacting with the people and land of Tinos. Within the time of this residency, I also wish to research the women of Tinos’ own relationship to death, dying practices and song. I am at once curious to explore these songs of lament with willing women and a participating audience, but also excited to discover approaches to processing grief that others wish to share and bring to the collaboration. In addition, I also wish to sample sounds from the land and Easter festivities as accompaniment to the songs, with the goal to capture the sense of a living Spring, the encompassing season.
Sticking with the traditions of keening and moirology, the project places women at the forefront, with the goal to explore the energy we can create or expel through simple singing (drone), sound and movement, as well as questioning our experience of time while lost in song. Connecting with the basis of keening where the responsibility lies with the keener to give you (the audience, the mourner) permission to express your sadness. How can we collectively connect to our own fragile mortality? Can sound and story help? Furthermore, the land playing another important role of our experience of time, how does more space (literally and figuratively) make the grieving and living process different?
Having lost my father on Good Friday, Spring has long played a significant role in my work, with grief processing being a key factor. I have often reflected on the tools that were available to me at the time, as the death / loss experience was controlled, lonely and private. Each year at Easter, I feel the sense of needing to be cleansed.
With Songs for Good Friday, I wish to honor those we have lost, and invite the audience and participants to inhabit the same space, to open to a truly collaborative experience. By turning to a lost tradition, the project asks: is it possible to discover ways to manage and expel our grief together? Can we tap into something new by visiting something so old?
TECHNICAL ASPECTS:
PA system, with speakers, to run vocals and recordings (via computer) through
microphone cables