MUSIQA SETS OFF FOR THE ‘STARS’
An ethereal harmony will glimmer to life this month, as Houston’s Musiqa launches its season with “Stars,” amagical new work by Brooklyn-based composer Trevor Weston.
The five-movement piece— based on a poem of the same name by Robert Hayden, the first African American writer to serve as consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress, a position later renamed poet laureate— will receive its world premiere Nov. 14 in a virtual concert that will be presented several times over the next three weekends through Nov. 29.
The celestial-inspired program will also feature a reading by award-winning poet Donika Kelly of a work she wrote specially for this celebratory event, alongside a range of educational modules that will further enhance the musical experience. The latter— what executive director Anthony Barilla dubbed a “constellation of extras” — will include insightful conversations with individuals, such as renowned astronomer Gibor Basri, Columbia professor of religion Josef Sorett and literary scholar Emerson Zora Hamsa, who will explore Hayden’s poetry in various contexts.
“For a group like ours, giving birth to new work is one of the most exciting and meaningful things that we do,” said Anthony Brandt, co-founder and artistic director of Musiqa. “So leading off the season with amajor work that we commissioned, that our Houston audiences will be the first to hear, that’s something we are all excited about. We had to give up the idea of performing it live, but it’s turned into a very special project that really is another milestone for us.”
The new-music collective enlisted the help of local artist James Templeton, who filmed the small ensemble performing “Stars” at the Midtown Arts and Theater Center Houston using free-standing lights to evoke the intimate atmosphere of a starry night.
For Weston, the piece was an opportunity to finally set this particular text to music— adesire he’s had since he received a book of Hayden’s poetry from one of his mentors, composer and music professor Thomas Jefferson Anderson, and his wife, Lois, about 15 years ago.
His passion for the subject matter, however, extends back even further. Growing up, Weston was so entranced by the twinkling pinpoints of light that grace the dark, velvety sky that his father, an interior designer, revamped his childhood room, adorning a deep blue ceiling with silver stars.
In his 15-minute work, Weston forms a new interpretation of the “music of the spheres,” an ancient philosophical concept suggesting that the circular movements of celestial bodies produce harmonies.
With the soaring vocals of soprano Karol Bennett, five musicians— flutist Amanda Galick, clarinetist Maiko Sasaki, pianist Laura Bleakley, violinist Jackson Guillen and cellist Mayara Velasquez— play instrumental imitations of the sound waves heard in seismology research recordings.
Throughout his process, Weston thoughtfully tied the content of the poem into his palette of musical material, which he based on different chords of nine notes to relate to the nine-pointed star, a symbol of Hayden’s Baha’i faith that is referenced in the final part of the text. Weston also honors the poet’s description of African American abolitionist Sojourner Truth with “Earth sounds in the stars,” aka elements of “Dark Was the Night” by Blind Willie Johnson, a gospel-blues song that appears on The Golden Record aboard the Voyager spacecraft.
“I want to create something that will encourage listeners to feel like they experienced something,” he said, “like you’ve taken a journey, like you were listening to a story, and at the end of the story, you feel like you’ve traveled somewhere.”