UPCOMING EVENTS:
May 18 at Beatrix Farrand Garden, Hyde Park, NY | A solo piano performance in a gorgeous garden setting. Bring a picnic! Free with RSVP requested | Info/RSVP
June 6 at Troy Listening Room, Troy, NY | Metno with dancer Claire Cuny & Katie Martucci | Tickets/Info (curator)
In February this year, I was back in my hometown – Washington, DC – in a beautiful private home, giving a concert. The 10 year anniversary of my dad’s death had recently come and gone. Or was it about to happen? I can never remember the date.
It was a room full of DC residents, including my mother, only a month after a presidential inauguration that we all knew was world-altering. The air was heavy.
I was introducing my song K.B. I talked about the anniversary of my dad’s death, I acknowledged the unsaid, and then…I wept. I wish I was exaggerating when I say I truly wept in front of that dear audience. I pushed through the sadness and yes, embarrassment, tears still streaming down my face, and I started playing K.B.
K.B. is achingly slow in the first half, and yet, if a listener mentions a specific song to me after a concert, it’s usually K.B. When folks write to me about sheet music, they ask about K.B. When a local DJ samples my music, it’s K.B. And when I perform K.B. live, I don’t know how else to put it except… the room changes. The energy shifts. And I feel the shift in myself.
I’ve been working on a book project recently for which I’m notating K.B. I’ve notated a few of my songs at this point (available for purchase here if you’re interested), but this one feels especially difficult to make available to other performers. If I introduce K.B. when I’m performing, I usually say something about how this song has turned into a container of sorts for grief – how it helps me feel connected to those I’ve lost and, perhaps more importantly, everyone in the room. It may sound heavy, but it’s always the moment in a performance when I feel the most release and the most joy.
The gravity that we felt in that room in Washington, DC, in February, has only magnified exponentially. Anti-trans legislation is proliferating across the country, directly affecting some of the people that I hold closest to my heart. In Maryland, the family of Kilmar Abrego Garcia continues to live through the most unimaginable horror. Kilmar, the man who was illegally deported to a mass prison camp in El Salvador through what can only be called state-sanctioned terror. Arts funding continues to be cut indiscriminately, affecting our most sacred arts organizations, the backbone of our culture.
The fragile thread holding together any sense of law, morality, or communal care continues to wear away. When does the unraveling stop?
In the middle of K.B., a single note is suspended before it opens upwards in a flourish of faster notes. Back in DC, in that moment of stillness, I heard a person quietly crying in the audience. My tears had since stopped but I could still feel the saltiness on my face, my skin stiff. I continued playing.
I want to be very clear: music itself isn’t going to save us. But the work that surrounds music? The gathering that surrounds music? It’s a start. In these moments, we are given express permission to feel the full extent of our humanity, in all its messiness. Where else can we simply let our minds and hearts wander to the places they need to go?
As artists, we have a crucial responsibility to care for our listeners and guide them through. It’s something I grapple with at every show: how can I give my listeners the space to truly feel in a way that is safe and grounded in care? And not only that, how can I remind each listener that the person next to them is host to their own universe of experiences and emotions? Importantly, how do we hold each other in these moments? During my performances, I like to make the point that whatever we experience together is sacred, but it can’t stop there. We must carry it onwards with outstretched arms.
Gabriel Kahane had this to say in his most recent newsletter:
It is easy to feel powerless in the face of an authoritarian regime that has rejected the rule of law. But one thing we can control is the way we treat our neighbors, near and far. Loving our enemies may not be easy. But where hate diminishes us, love costs us nothing, and brings dividends. To love one’s enemies is to move beyond victimhood, and to seek out the root of their hatred for us. Almost invariably, it springs from a wound, from fear. To love one’s enemies is to recognize an aspect of ourselves in that wound, in that fear, in that tendency to lash out. If we are able to create the template for a loving community—the Beloved Community—we may yet neutralize that fear, and bring the opponent to our side.
Music can be a powerful tool for expressing and realizing commonality, if we’re intentional about it. Can it even be the start of transformation?
That song is absolutely incredible and embedded with magic. I felt all my grief well up too and it was a container to feel so much. Thank you. Beautiful post too. I must see you perform live one day!
This convinced me to go listen and it was well worth it. Thank you!