Listening Party Podcast Nature Walk
Friday
May 14, 2021
1:00pm
Venue Online
Cost Free
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Nature Walk
Friday, May 14, 2021 | 1 pm | On Demand
Nature Walk is an audio scape of songs created by the members of the Pacific Opera Civic Engagement Quartet program from the 2020/2021 season.
During four weeks of training this spring, these artists (Charlotte Siegel, Simran Claire, Kaden Forsberg, Micah Schroeder) spent time working with three Indigenous mentors. The world view of these mentors, Sarah Rhude (Mi’qmak), Lindsay Delaronde (Mohawk) and Bradley Dick (Lkewungen) invited the singers to consider not only what land meant to them, as they interpreted these songs, but also, their approach to their work as artists.
You will hear each of these four artists, in a short, spoken reflection, before each musical program. You will learn more about their personal growth as artists as they considered an Indigenous way of being and knowing and allowed these newfound insights to seep into each song. The music in the program is pretty traditional. Pieces by Schumann, Debussy and Strauss, and some contemporary Broadway work and Canadian art song. There is even an improvisation and a new composition by Charlotte Siegel, one of the singers. But the way they sing them, the way they approached their preparation, and how it felt to be in the songs, changed.
Why not join them on this journey, and see what might change for you? Find a local park, quiet side street, or local hiking trail, and give it a listen. Notice how being in nature and walking on the land, makes you feel. Consider how you relate to the land you are walking on. Who was the caretaker of this land before the Settlers came to this place? What are you grateful for in this moment? How does this music deepen your connection to what you are seeing around you? What does this land mean to you?
Musical Program
Lyric translations provided below.
Charlotte Siegel, Soprano
- Edelweiss from The Sound of Music – Richard Rodgers
- Morgen, Op. 27 No. 4 – Richard Strauss
And tomorrow the sun will shine again
And on the path that I shall take,
It will unite us, happy ones, again,
Amid this same sun-breathing earth …
And to the shore, broad, blue-waved,
We shall quietly and slowly descend,
Speechless we shall gaze into each other’s eyes,
And the speechless silence of bliss shall fall on us … - Dawn’s awakening – Florence Price
- Ruhe Meine Seele, Op. 27 No. 1 – Richard Strauss
Not even
A soft breeze stirs,
In gentle sleep
The wood rests;
Through the leaves’
Dark veil
Bright sunshine
Steals.
Rest, rest,
My soul,
Your storms
Were wild,
You raged and
You quivered,
Like the breakers,
When they surge!
These times
Are violent,
Cause heart and
Mind distress—
Rest, rest,
My soul,
And forget
What threatens you! - 6 o’clock – Charlotte Siegel
Simran Claire, Mezzo-soprano
- Feldemsamkeit, Op. 86 – Johannes Brahms
I rest at peace in tall green grass
And gaze steadily aloft,
Surrounded by unceasing crickets,
Wondrously interwoven with blue sky.
The lovely white clouds go drifting by
Through the deep blue, like lovely silent dreams;
I feel as if I have long been dead,
Drifting happily with them through eternal space. - Le tombeau des Naïades, Chansons de Billitis – Claude Debussy
Along the frost-bound wood I walked;
My hair across my mouth,
Blossomed with tiny icicles,
And my sandals were heavy with muddy, packed snow.
He said to me: ‘What do you seek?’
‘I follow the satyr’s track.
His little cloven hoof-marks alternate like holes in a white cloak.’
He said to me: ‘The satyrs are dead.
‘The satyrs and the nymphs too.
For thirty years there has not been so harsh a winter.
The tracks you see are those of a goat.
But let us stay here, where their tomb is.’
And with the iron head of his hoe he broke the ice of the spring,
Where the naiads used to laugh.
He picked up some huge cold fragments, and, raising them to the pale sky,
gazed through them. - Ombra mai fu from Xerxes – George Frideric Handel
Tender and beautiful fronds
of my beloved plane tree,
Let Fate smile upon you.
May thunder, lightning, and storms
never bother your dear peace,
Nor may you by blowing winds be profaned.
Never was made
A plant
more dear and loving
or gentle. - Im tiefen Walde steh’ ich hier, Op. 83 No. 6 – Anton Dvorak
In the woods by the stream
I stand all alone,
And lost in my thoughts
I gaze into the stream’s eddy.
There I see an old stone,
Over which the water rolls.
And that stone beneath the waves,
Always rises and falls.
The stone battles the waves,
And finally overturns.
When will the waves of life finally
Sweep me away from this world? - Somewhere over the Rainbow from The Wizard of Oz – Harold Arlen
Kaden Forberg, Tenor
- It all fades Away from Bridges of Madison County – Jason Robert Brown
- Im wunderschönen Monat Mai, Dichterliebe – Robert Schumann
In May, the magic month of May,
When all the buds were springing,
Into my heart the burning
Bright arrow of love came winging.
In May, the magic month of May,
When all the birds were singing,
I told her of my yearning,
My longing and heart-wringing. - Aus meinen Tränen sprießen, Dichterliebe – Robert Schumann
Out of my tears of yearning
The blossoming flowers throng,
And all my sighs are turning
To nightingales in song.
And if you love me, dear,
I’ll give you those blossoms pale,
And outside your window you’ll hear
The song of the nightingale. - Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne, Dichterliebe – Robert Schumann
The rose and the lily, the sun and the dove,
I loved them all once, with the rapture of love.
I love them no more, they cannot outshine one –
My fair one, my rare one, my fine one, divine one,
She herself is love’s source and the spirit of
The rose and the lily, the sun and the dove. - Tighinn do America, Traditional Scottish song – arranged by John Beckwith
I’m at the bow of the ship
In an unsteady seat
Watching the surge coming towards us.
I see out yonder
A whale bursting from the water
White streams spouting from its nose.
In the dark groves
Where the cuckoo doesn’t call
Only woods without eggs or birds.
I left noble MacPherson
I wish I could see you
And sweet to me would be the sound of your voice.
You are just as usual
On your trip to Lanrick
And I am climbing the top of a huge wave.
But Angus my friend
I won’t forget your asking
And not wanting to part while we are alive.
Micah Schroeder, Baritone
- South of North Images of Canada – Srul Irving Glick
-
- Wilderness on Centre Island
- Vane
- Grace
- Northern river falls
- Privity
- Stripe
- Congregation at the shoreline
- Windmill
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Physically Distant | Socially Connected
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