Program Notes

In The Shining Place, I explored music and poetry by 20th- and 21st-century women composers Eve Beglarian (b. 1958), Missy Mazzoli (b. 1980), Judith Weir (b. 1954), Lori Laitman (b. 1955), and Margaret Bonds (1913-1972), featuring the poetry of Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), Mary Oliver (1935-2019), and Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950). This filmed concert was presented in collaboration with pianist Michael Sheppard and audio/video engineer Andrew Bohman.

As I navigated the continual isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was most drawn to music, texts, and images that communicated a desire to expand the self, either through mining the interiority of one’s life or seeking new adventures in the larger world.

In American composer Lee Hoiby’s The Shining Place: Five Poems by Emily Dickinson, I encountered the words of Amherst-born poet Emily Dickinson (1830-1886). Regarded as a towering figure in English literature, Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), who wrote over 1,800 poems, spent most of her life at her family’s property in Amherst, Massachusetts. Although Dickinson’s circle of family and friends were aware of her writing, the true extent of her poetry was not discovered until after her death.

I kept returning to Dickinson’s imagining of a “shining place,” in which she imagines her entrance into paradise. In awe of such otherworldly surroundings, the poet describes her joy as the saints speak her name for the first time.

Me — come! My dazzled face
In such a shining place!
Me — hear! My foreign Ear
The sounds of Welcome — there!

The Saints forget
Our bashful feet —

My Holiday, shall be
That They — remember me —
My Paradise — the fame
That They — pronounce my name — (431)

While Dickinson’s poem engages with religious themes, I also interpreted her “shining place” as a paradise within oneself. By February 2022, like all of us, I continued to grapple with the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, including filming this recital in an empty hall without an audience. As I prepared to perform for no one, I took inspiration from Dickinson’s ability to plumb the depths of her own imagination from the desk in her bedroom, nourishing her creativity in solitude.

In searching for an image to encapsulate my version of Dickinson’s “shining place,” I kept returning to the vivid paintings of Washington DC-based artist Alma Thomas (1891-1978), which I had seen in pre-pandemic trips to the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Thomas, who was the first Black woman artist to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1972, experimented with color theory and abstraction throughout her long career as an artist and educator.

Thomas’ aesthetic became synonymous with her colorful, mosaic-like images, such as A Fantastic Sunset (1970). With its saturated, red sun surrounded by rings of multi-colored light, Thomas’ sunset is a brilliant visual incarnation of what I imagine my “shining place” could look like. For more information on Thomas and her incredible artwork, check out the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

February 2022
Baltimore, MD

Multimedia

For more clips from The Shining Place, check out my media page and YouTube channel.