Concert: Born by the River

Wednesday, March 15, 2023
8:00PM

Marigny Opera House
725 St Ferdinand Street
Faubourg Marigny

 

Concert Description

Like the powerful force of a river flowing through land, our collective memories and narratives sculpt our relationship to the places we live and to each other.  Join the musicians of the Birdfoot Festival and special Guest Artists in a concert that contemplates how place and memory shape the stories we tell about ourselves, and how these stories in turn shape our relationship with the land we call home.

Music by John Luther Adams imagines the inner lives of birds in his string quartet, Dream of a Canyon Wren, while Yaz Lancaster suggests parallels between the subconscious state of inherited memory and the way snow packs into glacial ice. New Orleans native Ben Zervigon follows tributaries of water as they make their way down the Mississippi, while music by Lei Liang traces the transformations and transmutations of musical lines through “sound clouds” in his piece for percussion and audience. Music by Louisiana composers Edmond Dédé (1827-1903) and Camille Nickerson (1888-1982), evoke a nearly forgotten side of New Orleans’s rich musical past—and reveal the story of exceptional Creole musicians who were an integral participants in the city’s overflowing operatic scene. And the visceral joy of Weber’s Clarinet Quintet invites us to connect to the physical satisfaction of sound—and the goodness of existing and charting a shared future in a tactile world.

Birdfoot is pleased to welcome Guest Artists Givonna Joseph and Tara Melvin.

Note: This concert is based on themes and ideas developed in partnership with the Descendant’s Project and will feature stories and narratives honoring land and memory from this collaboration and the event on March 12.