In the Sky I Am Walking
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Ekmeles and maya + rouvelle present In the Sky I am Walking Livestreamed from Brooklyn, NY July 18, 2020 at 8PM Ekmeles Charlotte Mundy, soprano Elisa Sutherland, mezzo-soprano Steve Beck, piano maya + rouvelle Lili Maya and James Rouvelle, video art Charles Mueller, technical assistance This performance is free to all, and will be online for one week following the live stream. We would also like to call your attention to the Navajo Nation COVID19 Relief Fund: www.navajo.fund We would like to acknowledge that Ekmeles is perform- ing today on unceded land of the Lenape people, and to pay respect to elders, both past and present. Program Asdzą́ą́ Nadleehé / Yoołgai Asdzą́ą́ (2016) Raven Chacon (b. 1977) Am Himmel wandre ich (1972) Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007) Notes and Texts Asdzą́ą́ Nadleehé / Yoołgai Asdzą́ą́ Changing Woman / White Shell Woman Nááyéé’ – monster Déélgeed – The Horned Monster Nináháleeh – Male Monster Bird Jóhonáá’éí’ – The Sun Soprano: First Woman was alone with only First Man and four other people who survived. And there was nothing left to do but die or try to survive. And of these four, two were children, were siblings, and so while there was a future for them, there would be no future from them. Mezzo: First Man was alone with only First Woman and four other people who survived. And there was nothing left to do but die or try to survive. And of these four there was an old man and there was an old woman, and while they’d lived long lives themselves, it ended there. Nááyéé. Nothing will go wrong, I will surround myself in song. Soprano: And then first man found a turquoise figurine which grew into a woman. My sister I am lonely, and I wonder about the sun. So I will open my legs and watch the sun as he goes from East to West. Mezzo: And then first man found a white shell figurine which grew into a woman. Why should we remain here saying nothing, doing nothing, seeing no one and waiting. So I will go down into the rocks and let the waterfall fall down on me. And twins were born. / Find our father. Jóhonáá’éí’. Father give us your weapons. Soprano: A piece of lung he brings for me; our people are restored. A piece of wing he brings for me; my people are restored. A lock of hair he brings for me; his people are restored. The monster’s eyes he brings for me; our people are restored. Mezzo: Déégeed he brings for me; our people are restored. Nináháleeh he brings for me; my people are restored. Nááyéé’ he brings for me; his people are restored. Nááyéé’ he brings for me; our people are restored. Am Himmel wandre ich Am Himmel wandre ich is part of a larger work by Stockhausen, Alphabet für Liège. The fundamental idea underlying Alphabet is the notion that sound vibra- tions can affect both living beings and inanimate matter. Stockhausen explained his purpose in this piece was to show “how sound waves always change the mol- ecules, even the atoms of a being who listens to music, making them vibrate. And that is what we want to make visible, because most people only believe what they see.” Am Himmel wandre ich is the only part of Alphabet capable of performance in- dependent of the larger work, and the only part to have been published. The work consists of twelve scenes performed by two singers. Each scene consits of a Na- tive American song, taken from a book titled American Indian Prose and Poetry, edited by Margaret Astrov. The different poems, aphorisms or prayers come from the following tribes: Chippewa, Pawnee, Nootka, Teton Sioux, Ayacucho, Aztec. The scenes follow one another without interruption. The first song is intoned on a single note, C, the next song adds a second note to the first, the F# above, the third adds the G a semitone higher still, the fourth descends to E, and so on, until reaching a twelve-tone row in the final song, but with the notes in fixed registers. 1. DREAM SONG (Chippewa) In the sky I am walking, A Bird I accompany. 2. LOVE SONG (Chippewa) Oh I am thinking Oh I am thinking I have found my lover Oh I think it is so! 3. WAR SONG (Pawnee) Let us see, is this real, Let us see, is this real, This life I am living? Ye Gods, who dwell everywhere, Let us see, is this real, This life I am Living? 4. LOVE SONG (Nootka) No matter how hard I try to forget you, you always come back to my mind, and when you hear me singing you may know I am weeping for you. 5. SONG sung over a dying person (Chippewa) You are a spirit, I am making you a spirit, In the place where I sit I am making you a spirit. 6. OPENING PRAYER OF THE SUN DANCE (Teton Sioux) Grandfather! A voice I am going to send, Hear me! All over the universe A voice I am going to send, Hear me, Grandfather! I will live! I have said it. 7. PERUVIAN DANCE SONG (Ayacucho) Wake up, woman, Rise up, woman, In the middle of the street, A dog howls. May the death arrive – May the dance arrive – Comes the dance You must dance, Comes the death You can’t help it! Ah! what a chill, Ah! what a wind.... 8. PLAINT AGAINST THE FOG (Nootka) Don’t you ever, You up in the sky, Don’t you ever get tired Of having the clouds between you and us? 9. A SONG BY NEZAHUALCOYOTL (Aztec) I am like the quetzal bird, I am created in the one and only god; I sing sweet songs among the flowers; I chant songs and rejoice in my heart. 10. SONG TO BRING FAIR WEATHER (Nootka) You, whose day it is, make it beautiful. Get out your rainbow colors, So it will be beautiful. 11. LOVE SONG (Aztec) I know not whether thou hast been absent: I lie down with thee, I rise up with thee, In my dreams it is thou moving within my heart. If my eardrops tremble in my ears, I know it is thou moving within my heart. 12. SONG OF A MAN WHO RECEIVED A VISION (Teton Sioux) Friends, behold! Sacred I have been made. Friends, behold! In a sacred manner I have been influenced At the gathering of the clouds. Sacred I have been made, Friends, behold! Sacred I have been made. Biographies Raven Chacon is a composer, performer and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. As a solo artist, collaborator, or with Postcommodity, Chacon has exhibited or performed at Whitney Biennial, documenta 14, RED- CAT, Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Chaco Canyon, Ende Tymes Festival, 18th Biennale of Sydney, and The Kennedy Center. Every year, he teaches 20 students to write string quartets for the Native American Composer Apprenticeship Project (NACAP). He is the recipient of the United States Artists fellowship in Music, The Creative Capital award in Visual Arts, The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation artist fellowship, and the American Academy’s Berlin Prize for Music Composition. He lives in Albuquerque, NM. Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928–2007) composed 376 individually performable works. He started composing in the early 1950s. Stockhausen’s entire oeuvre can be classified as “Spiritual Music”; this becomes more and more evident not only in the compositions with spiritual texts, but also in the other works of “Overtone Music”, “Intuitive Music”, “Mantric Music”, reaching “Cosmic Music” such as STIMMUNG (TUNING), AUS DEN SIEBEN TAGEN (FROM THE SEVEN DAYS), MANTRA, STERNKLANG (STAR SOUND), LICHT (LIGHT), and KLANG (SOUND). At nearly all world premières and in innumerable exemplary performances and recordings of his works world-wide, Stockhausen either personally conducted, or performed in or directed the performance as sound projectionist. In addition to numerous guest professorships in Switzerland, the United States, Finland, Holland, and Denmark, Stockhausen was appointed Professor for Com- position at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne in 1971. In 1996 he was award- ed an honorary doctorate from the Freie Unversität Berlin, and in 2004 received an honorary doctorate from the Queen’s University in Belfast. He is a member of 12 international Academies for the Arts and Sciences, was named Honor- ary Citizen of Kuerten in 1988, became Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, received many gramophone prizes and, among other honours, the Siemens Music Prize, the UNESCO Picasso Medal, the Cologne Culture Prize and, the Polar Music Prize with the laudation: “Karlheinz Stockhausen is being awarded the Polar Music Prize for 2001 for a career as a composer that has been characterized by impeccable integrity and never-ceasing creativity, and for hav- ing stood at the fore front of musical development for fifty years.” [εk’mεlεs] \ek’meles\ 1. In Ancient Greek music theory, tones of indefinite pitch and intervals with com- plex ratios, tones “not appropriate for musical usage.” 2. A “brilliant young ensemble... defining a fresh and virtuosic American sound” - The New Yorker Ekmeles is a vocal ensemble dedicated to the performance of new and rarely-heard works, and gems of the historical avant garde. New York is home to a vibrant in- strumental New Music scene, with a relative paucity of vocal music. Ekmeles was founded to fill the gap by presenting new a cappella repertoire for solo voices, and by collaborating with these instrumental ensembles. Director Jeffrey Gavett brings a hybrid vision to the group: he is an accomplished ensemble singer and performer of new works, and holds degrees from Westmin- ster Choir College and Manhattan School of Music’s Contemporary Performance Program.