A Walk Through My Cũcũ’s Farm
Nyokabi performs a solo adaption of a piece from her first record, 'peace places: kenyan memories'.
“In December 2020, my family and I were able to visit my Cũcũ (Grandmother) in her home in Githũnguri, Kenya. We walked around the farm — just as we always do when we visit — but this time, I found myself paying more attention: to the ground, to our languages of Kiswahili and Kikuyu; to the trees and fruit. It felt like the things around us were silently teaching me.”

Mũtamaiyũ
“Mũtamaiyũ” is a sacred tree for the Agĩkũyũ people of Kenya, and lends its name to this work-in-progress piece from Nyokabi's upcoming album of the same name. This experimental project explores Nyokabi’s fragmented yet re-blossoming relationship to the knowledge of her people — viewed via the lens of language, spirituality, and the continued fight for freedom. All of it intricately woven with the past, present, and future connections with the land.

Inspired by interviews with relatives as well as documentary audio of bombings and civilian attacks that was recorded from a residential balcony in Beirut between 1976 and 1978, Bombs in Beirut draws an immediate, emotional acoustic image of everyday life (during wartime) in the Middle East. Mary Kouyoumdjian autobiographically addresses the fate of her family, for whom Lebanon turned from being a place of refuge from the Armenian genocide to becoming a dangerous home.

C Ce See (2022)

In C Ce See, Niloufar Nourbakhsh’s particular soundscape raises a musical sculpture that brings to the fore the tremendous significance of artistic connections in a time of suppression, femicide and human rights restrictions.

Solitary Confinement Aria from scene III

The 2009 Iranian presidential elections were followed by the eruption of protests against the election results throughout the country; numerous arrests and murders ensued. The concert will feature the Solitary Confinement Aria from the opera We the Innumerable – a heroic journey of an Iranian woman who defends truth even in the face of fear and violence and who does not give up the struggle for freedom.

The title Shouting forever into the receiver – taken from Ocean Vuong’s novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous – triggered memories of the shouts and cries of the Plantation Machine for Hannah Kendall. The suffering of the population in the African diaspora and the impending doom is evoked by the coincidence of an orbital soundscape with prominent fragments of European musical codes. The work thereby establishes a depressing connection between the past and present of different continents and asks about the compatibility of values.

‘My body / writes into your flesh the poem you make of me’… Setting out from Audre Lord’s poem Recreation, Jamie Man poses a utopian question about symbiosis and equality of all bodies in her world premiere Etude #16161D. What is the sound of the ritual that exposes the naked, vulnerable body to violence and evokes power and control?