3 minute read

Hybrid Spaces

from 2023 Ojai Music Festival Program

from 2023 Ojai Music Festival Program, page 114

Ojai Music Festival Arts Manag...

Songs are the most versatile of musical artifacts. As a medium of communication, song isn’t even confined to the human species. The impulse to sing accompanies the relationships that define our lives, from the intimate and familial to the spiritual to the political: whether it’s a soothing lullaby to calm a child, a heartfelt moment of prayer, or a defiant chant of protest.

Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi make this versatility itself into an art in their song programs. The notion of songs as “repertory” items to be temporarily retrieved from the shelf, dusted off, and ritually performed — as if the singer were merely ventriloquizing the past — couldn’t be more antithetical to the experience Giddens and Turrisi seek to convey in their performances.

Part of what makes this approach possible is their shared conviction that the categories we’ve been trained to assign to songs are artificial — above all, the categories that reinforce hierarchies of “high” and “low,” “classical” and “popular.” “Art songs” written by privileged composers in the Western classical tradition or folk songs that originated with enslaved African Americans and have been passed down over the generations: the distinctions cued by labels reinforce preconceived ideas about what to expect and even how we should respond to a musical experience.

Giddens refers to the “hybrid spaces” that emerge when we break down these boundaries — spaces where new contexts can be created through boldly original juxtapositions that freshly illuminate the familiar with a haunting, at times surprising, relevance.

One of Giddens’s models for this approach is Nina Simone — whose birthday she happens to share and to whom she paid tribute by making Tomorrow Is My Turn the title song of her debut solo album (2015), adding her own layer to Simone’s unforgettable version of the Charles Aznavour hit.

“The idea is that a recital for piano and voice doesn’t have to be attached to any concept of a ‘classical’ recital — even when we’re also doing some classical pieces,” says Turrisi. “We’re exploring the fluidity between the classical and popular sound.” For example, surprising crosscurrents can emerge between a madrigal by Monteverdi and an Italian pop song from the 1960s. Even within the realm of what we generally consider “vernacular” music, hidden and suppressed histories are brought to light — such as the unacknowledged origins of country music from African American sources. (To explore more of this topic, Giddens’s contributions to the 2019 Ken Burns Country Music series are highly recommended.)

Giddens and Turrisi show how timeless folk tunes can take on a burning relevance for today, as with the songs about final things that they interpret on their recent Grammy Award–winning They’re Calling Me Home album, produced in isolation during the pandemic.

On the other hand, Giddens’s original song Build a House, which she premiered online with Yo-Yo Ma on Juneteenth 2020 — and recently transformed into a children’s book (see p. 83) — works back from frustration over contemporary racial injustice to condense a history of the African American experience into a song that seems to have always been part of the folk tradition.

“It’s the song that matters, not what category it is, not where it originally appeared,” says Giddens. “If the song is compelling, what’s to keep it from being done as an art song?”

—THOMAS MAY

This concert is made possible with the generous support of Mechas and Greg Grinnell

There is no intermission during the concert

Saturday, June 10, 2023 | 8:00am

Chaparral Auditorium

Morning Meditation

Niloufar Shiri kamancheh | Mario Gotoh violin

You will experience improvisation and sonic exploration through deep listening. Together with Mario Gotoh on violin, we will immerse the space in the sound of bowed string instruments to forge newfound connections through the intervallic structure and melodies of the Iranian musical tradition, the Radif.

CHAPARRAL AUDITORIUM

414 EAST OJAI AVENUE, OJAI

This concert is made possible by the generous support of Carol and Luther Luedtke

The Ojai residency of the Iranian Female Composers Association is made possible, in part, by the gracious support of the Farhang Foundation

The concert appearance of Kayhan Kalhor is made possible by the generous support of The Barbara Barnard Smith Fund for World Musics, Ventura County Community Foundation

The concert appearance of Gloria Cheng is made possible by the generous support of Drs. Bridget

Tsao and Bruce Brockman

OJAI CHATS at Libbey Park Gazebo, 11:30am: Niloufar Nourbakhsh and Carlos Simon

There is no intermission during the concert

Saturday, June 10, 2023 | 10:00am