escape for a moment in this visceral journey towards radical expression scraping, licking, pulling, gnarling, raging your skin holds every bit of you together until the inside finds a way out this flesh is where we live, where we stake our claim, take up space, stand strong, own our sexuality, channel our anger, and claim our freedom we are powerful in this skin Amanda Gookin, August 2021 Cellist and creator of Forward Music Project
AMANDA GOOKIN Cellist Amanda Gookin “pushes classical forward” (LA Times) through raw performances of new works and bold leadership as an arts administrator and educator. In pursuit of socially-conscious programming, her Grammy® nominated album with PUBLIQuartet, Freedom and Faith, addressed the resilience of the female spirit throughout history; and her first solo album, Forward Music Project 1.0, was praised as “the highest level of artistry” by The Whole Note and listed in The 25 Best Classical Music Tracks of 2020 by the New York Times. Amanda is a sought-after public speaker on the intersections of activism and music, and has made appearances on TEDxMidAtlantic, Houston Public Media, Second Inversion, and I Care If You Listen. Designing and teaching courses on social leadership, music history, and improvisation, her work has reinvigorated core curriculum at The New School and SUNY Purchase. Fulfilling her strength and passion for activating change and innovation from both sides of the stage, she serves as Executive Director of the MATA Festival in New York City and the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival in Virginia.
The mission of FMP directly engages with the world we live in by valuing vulnerability and unrelentless realism. Presented by The Kennedy Center, Park Avenue Armory, de Doelen, National Sawdust and educational institutions across the US to encourage artistic experimentation and self-expression, the message of FMP is unwavering: in the fight for radical empathy and feminine empowerment, you are not alone. In a review of Amanda’s first solo album, Forward Music Project 1.0, Cheryl Ockrant of The WholeNote wrote, “It is the highest level of artistry that can realize a message, a story, or an emotion while seeming to have not performed it at all.”
1. VEILED I think it takes a lot of courage to stand up to something that everyone has accepted as normal. Personally as an Iranian woman, I carry a lot of anger with me. Anger that comes from witnessing things happen to the women in my personal life, to a larger scale, growing up in a country that actively veils women’s presence through compulsory hijab or banning solo female singers from pursuing a professional career. For me, it’s important to transform this anger into a collective force that is both beautiful and resilient. Veiled is a tribute to those Iranian women who made such transformations possible.
NILOUFAR NOURBAKHSH Composer, Pianist, Laptopist, Niloufar Nourbakhsh, is grateful to live and work as an artist in collaboration with different people in the world, through different mediums and forms. The inspiration for her compositions can vary from a single moment of joy and laughter to intense political situations that shadow millions of people. Community is central to her existence and artistic process. She is grateful for having multiple artistic families including Iranian Female Composers Association - IFCA, Emruz Festival and Ensemble Decipher. Her name in Persian means a water lily that gives light.
2. TACTILE When I first talked to Amanda about collaborating, she said she liked composers pushing her comfort zone. We talked for a while about what would feel vulnerable in a good way: singing, playing very softly, speaking other people’s intense experiences. These ideas eventually led to Tactile. It’s a piece about the erotics of everyday life, as well as heightened interpersonal moments that might or might not be categorized as “sex.” Much of the text simply describes bodily sensations. Maybe you’ll recognize some of them from your own life.
ALEX TEMPLE A sound can evoke a time, a place, a cultural moment, or a worldview. Alex Temple writes music that distorts and combines iconic sounds to create new meanings, often in service of surreal narratives that have been described as both “zany” (New York Times) and “nightmarish” (New Yorker). She’s particularly interested in reclaiming socially disapprovedof (“cheesy”) timbres, playing with the boundary between funny and frightening, investigating lost memories and secret histories, crafting elaborate polysyllabic rhymes, and telling queer and trans stories.
3. TO TELL A STORY When Amanda asked me to create this work, it was right around the time of the Kavanaugh hearings. I began thinking about the value of truth, and how Blasey Ford’s truth had been manipulated violently into fiction. I fell upon an interview with Susan Sontag from 1983 where the interviewer had asked her about the power of storytelling. While listening to the conversation I realized that I only wanted to hear her side. I then worked with sound artist Sxip Shirey to create a backing track of sonic artifacts that through manipulations, repeats, stutters, and an eventual breakthrough, guides us through how To Tell A Story.
PAOLA PRESTINI Composer Paola Prestini has collaborated with poets, filmmakers, and scientists in large-scale multimedia works that chart her interest in extra-musical themes ranging from the cosmos to the environment. She has created, written, and produced large scale projects such as the largest communal VR opera, The Hubble Cantata, and the eco-documentary currently on PBS, The Colorado. As an immigrant, many identities, cultures, and values have collided and interlocked within her helping create a synthesis of both unique and universal ideas that naturally manifest into music. On a more granular level, folk melody is infused into the creation of original melodic lines that are deconstructed then supported with complex harmonies, rhythms, counterpoint and electronic worlds. Her work incorporates improvisation, live electronics, foley, and spatial elements. It is of the moment, political, ambitious, and always curious.
4-6. BELLY When Amanda asked me to make this piece, I thought about how my uneasiness with my own body has impacted the way I move trough the world. I began the piece by asking for people’s stories of how others have spoken about their bodies. The result was an outpouring of memories, from both men and women. I’ve structured the piece in three sections to match the three categories that emerged in these memories: youth, adulthood, and aging. The music for each section is inspired by one of three medieval humors: blood (associated with excitement and youth), yellow bile (anger), and black bile (melancholy).
KAMALA SANKARAM Composer/performer Kamala Sankaram seeks to create works that speak to the complexity of the modern world. Moving freely between opera, experimental music, and sound art, her work draws on her Indian-American heritage, her fascination with emerging and obsolete technologies, and her love of sounds ranging from radiator fans to pickerel frogs.
7. SEETHING The Heat Wave Starting in your chest and rolling up Stopping at the base of your neck and Overflowing in your throat then creeping upwards to your cheeks. The fine peach fuzz prickling on your heated skin standing alert A call to attention, present and ready for battle. The red you see behind your eyes rushes past your ears With war drums pulsing The ever-present thump thump thump Of a beating heart amplified So deafening you know They must hear it-everyone must hear it, for They summoned them. Your inner Bloodhounds chomp at the bit Awaiting a release they so rarely see to run rampant, unbridled, muzzle left at the door, Clenched jaws frothing and their snarls so long trapped behind fangs Freed to howl your long protected rage -their wardKept and sealed and protected In their darkest inner corners.
7. SEETHING But red begins to fade and the Heat cools As you remember The Routine You remember you can’t completely let them run And you shouldn’t let that blinding heat out In case it is taken from you So you let it dissipate into the air A wafting heat mirage that is only visible to The Others Who also have been forced to keep their inner hounds Kenneled in the yard and on a very very short leash. – Shelley Washington, 2018
SHELLEY WASHINGTON Composer Shelley Washington has emerged as an important and powerful voice of her generation. With an eclectic palette that draws from classical, jazz, rock, American folk, and other contemporary musical spaces, Washington seeks to tell memorable sonic stories that comment on current and past social narratives, both personal and observed. Her music explores emotions and intentions, incorporating intricate rhythms to encourage layered listening through grooves, melody, and harmony. In addition, she addresses social injustices in the hope of creating a public dialogue.
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to those who helped bring this project to life. Special thanks to National Sawdust for supporting the creation and world premiere of the FMP 2.0 commissions during my artist residency in 2018-19; my artistic collaborator S. Katy Tucker for creating such beautiful projection imagery for our live shows; Jessie Montgomery, my best friend, my producer, for your unending encouragement and beautiful musicianship; Beth Beauchamp, my guiding light who keeps it real; Sam Suggs, my rock, my partner, my life raft when I can’t find the horizon; the generous Forward Music Project supporters; Mike Tierney and Giselle Manzano Ramirez, the artistic talent behind the sound and visuals of this album; the badass, brave, fiercely creative FMP composers; and my dear friends who always pick up the phone and are there for me when I need you. Thank you.
ALBUM CREDITS Album artwork and design by Giselle Manzano Ramirez Produced by Jessie Montgomery Engineered, Edited, Mixed, and Mastered by Mike Tierney Recorded at Shiny Things Studio, Brooklyn, NY, July 2021 Photos by Julia Comita Performer credits: Tracks 1-7: Amanda Gookin, cello, vocals, kick drum Track 1: Chelsea Loew and Solmaz Badri, vocals Track 3: Sxip Shirey, electronics