(RE)SOUNDING OCCUPATION
Country: USA
This presentation will be a repertoire session woven together with story-telling, in which participants encounter choral repertoire in the context of peoples’ lives. The stories and songs uplift underrepresented traditions, composers, and lyricists while presenting concrete materials for participants to take with them.
The session will interactively investigate paradigms for programming, rehearsing, and sharing music about ‘people and the land,’ works that uncover the unifying experiences in peoples’ relationship to land and place. More than a traditional repertoire session, however, the presentation itself will serve as an example of holistic integration of cultural context and a new approach to rehearsals.
Sample works will range from unison to multipart, treble to mixed, and historic to contemporary. The selections will trace the history of occupation and colonisation throughout the world, with an orientation toward stories of resistance and healing.
Miguel Ángel Felipe serves as associate professor of music and director of choral activities at the University of Arizona. Felipe served in similar roles at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Boston University, Oberlin Conservatory, and Mount Holyoke College. Felipe has commissioned extensively and spoken at events about the composer-conductor relationship. His programs often meld adventurous with traditional repertoire exploring with audiences and singers an evolving, global choral traditional. His research focuses on choral innovations Southeast Asia and the Pacific, on concepts of choral societies in cultural development, and on conducting pedagogy.
Nicky Manlove is a graduate student in choral conducting at the University of Arizona and is guided by nearly a decade of experience in activism and community organising. Having worked on issues from non-discrimination legislation for LGBTQ youth to police brutality and the prison-industrial-complex, Nicky’s musical work seeks to grapple directly with power, oppression, and histories of domination in our complex world. More recently, Nicky created a performance project titled La Frontera: Visions of a World Without Borders, a concert program interrogating the imposition of borders by colonialism on Central and South America. Nicky is the founding conductor of an ensemble for queer/trans youth in southern Arizona.