In celebration of National Poetry Day, pianist Annie Yim performs solo works with recorded voices in a poetry-inspired concert, featuring her fascinating MusicArt cross-disciplinary collaborations.
Joining the Guildhall alumna for live dialogues will be the poet Zaffar Kunial – shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize 2018 – and composers Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Raymond Yiu.
‘The Poet Speaks’, a MusicArt conceptual concert, combines the recorded voices of composers and writers with live piano, juxtaposing poems from two centuries with musical responses to them by Debussy, Ravel, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, and Philip Glass. Für Alina by Arvo Pärt will be performed with a specially commissioned poem Sunlight by Zaffar Kunial.
The live dialogue will also feature extracts from the new work Mirrors co-created by Annie Yim with poet Kayo Chingonyi and composer Raymond Yiu for MusicArt's most recent collaboration with Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac.
Other writing included ranges from French poetry by Aloysius Bertrand and Charles Baudelaire to a personal love poem by Cage; from Else Lasker-Schüler’s expressionist poem Versöhnung (Reconciliation), which inspired Franz Marc’s woodcut print, to Allen Ginsberg’s anti-war poem Wichita Vortex Sutra. Each pairing of musical composition and poem reveals tributes, friendships, and artistic affinities.
Each work is no more than a few minutes long, and yet contains a microcosm of the composer’s unique stamp, carrying far more than meets the eyes and ears. The hope is to create meaningful dialogues within the pairing of poetry and music.
Presented in association with The Poetry Society.