March 12, 2024
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
Atlanta, GA – USA
“VIMMEN for WOMEN”
Nicole Frankel, flute; Jamie Jordan, voice; Choo Choo Hu, piano; Robert Anemone & Alice Hong, violins; Laura Usiskin, cello.
Sarah GIBSON: Woven
Paola PRESTINI: Psithurism, his song
Nicole CHAMBERLAIN: Prayer Cycle
Mara GIBSON: Swansongs
Tania LEÓN: Alma
Brittany J. GREEN: The Sounds You Left Behind
Alice HONG: Good Bones
Patrick Tabeek | 18 MAR 2024
As a leading all-women ensemble in Atlanta, Ensemble VIM provides a unique and important perspective on the contemporary chamber music scene. This performance provided a window into the most fresh and innovative new music by living female-identifying composers over the last few years.
Last Tuesday night’s ensemble, in concert at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, consisted of soprano Jamie Jordan, cellist Laura Usiskin, flutist Nicole Frankel, pianist Choo Choo Hu, violinist (and composer) Alice Hong, and guest violinist Robert Anemone, .
Each piece in this program brought a unique emotional and spiritual perspective, especially evident in the opening piece, Woven by Sarah Gibson. Scored for flute, cello, and soprano, it has a unique texture. Meandering between exposed unison and contrapuntal material, we get a grasp of both the innate and raw, as well as intimate and sultry expressiveness of Sophie Wingland’s text. The piece has a unique structure, where one-half of the poem’s lines are given as each verse, and then, finally, they come together at the end, resulting in a full, detailed, and raw emotional experience.
The next piece was Paola Prestini’s Psithurism, his song for flute and piano. It’s a beautiful piece that bridges not only a woman’s connection to nature, art, and spirituality but also a woman’s connection to motherhood, and specifically, in this case, Prestini’s connection to her son through her art. To quote the composer, “…to his joy for the wind through the trees, and fallen leaves, and to my whispers to him at night…” That was achieved beautifully by both Hu and Frankel, as their technical brilliance brought me to an open field with the wind whispering like a mother whispers to their child as they fall asleep. The flute and piano were similar throughout the piece yet remained in different tonalities. They each had equal weight in the music but had varying impulses, which was meant to show the bond between mother and son.
Prayer Cycle by Nicole Chamberlain followed. A five-movement work using traditional prayer text based on woman saints. Each movement is intended to represent a woman in Chamberlain’s family: St. Anne for her oldest sister, Joan of Arc for her older sister, St. Martha for herself, St. Bernadette for her mother, concluding with the Hail Mary for all women. The juxtaposition of atonality on top of secular text was rather poignant, given the general treatment of women in religious institutions around the world. This piece stands as a beautiful message of appreciation for women and their spiritual strength.
Next was Mara Gibson’s Swansong, inspired by the artwork of Swedish artist Hilma Klint, who, similarly to Hildegard Von Bingen, was known for her mystical thoughts and introspectiveness. This piece, in particular, focuses on Klint’s use of swans, who are able to escape worldliness.
During the performance, the audience was shown Klint’s work, which contains direct references to Yin and Yang (a black and white swan). These two exist and struggle together yet are constantly intertwined, similar to the discourse between masculinity and femininity, mirroring each other yet having their unique set of problems and solutions.
Scored for cello and piano, it seems that the cello represents the black and the piano the white, sharing a lot of similar material. The discourse between the two is most evident in the relentlessness of the music, which most directly mirrors the energy between masculinity and femininity. They are somehow very similar, but it is nearly impossible to understand the experience of the other.
Tania León’s Alma and Brittany J. Green’s The Sounds You Left Behind were next on the program. While these two pieces were incredibly different, both texturally and in context, I found that they did a brilliant job at painting such a clear and precise picture of emotional and spiritual concepts.
Alma emulates the invisible forces of nature that create such small yet incredibly beautiful parts of life, something as simple as the wind brushing chimes. The opening and close of the piece sound like these chimes, and the bouncy and floating textures feel like a playful, pure interaction.
The Sounds You Left Behind is more based on science, focusing on the connection and correlation between sound and emotion. The music explored emptiness and loss, representing it in a simple yet effective way with the words “I gather up each sound you left behind,” the ensemble started with only one note between them, which snowballed into more rhythmic texture and complexity.
The night’s final piece was a world premiere from Atlanta composer Alice Hong. Good Bones is a beautifully cinematic piece that touches on a subject that I have struggled with recently: the fragility of life and the unfortunate parts of our world juxtaposed against the unbridled and unrelenting beauty of the world we live within.
Based on an eponymous poem by Maggie Smith, Good Bones also explores the thought process behind showing your child the world and reflecting on your own experience within it. The world is terrible, yet beautiful. Alice Hong’s representation of this concept was stunning, and I got a complete picture of the subject. The more tonal approach to the piece lends itself to being easily digested, representing bringing the subject up to a child brilliantly. There was sadness and beauty, and they coexist in this piece just as they do in life. ■
EXTERNAL LINKS:
- Ensemble VIM: ensemblevim.org
Read more by Patrick Tabeek.
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