{"id":404,"date":"2019-07-21T17:23:33","date_gmt":"2019-07-21T21:23:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nellshawcohen.com\/blog\/?p=404"},"modified":"2019-07-21T17:23:33","modified_gmt":"2019-07-21T21:23:33","slug":"new-recording-transform-the-world-with-beauty-for-vocal-ensemble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nellshawcohen.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/new-recording-transform-the-world-with-beauty-for-vocal-ensemble\/","title":{"rendered":"New Recording! &#8220;Transform the World with Beauty&#8221; for Vocal Ensemble"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>GRAMMY Award-nominated vocal ensemble <a href=\"https:\/\/www.skylarkensemble.org\/\">Skylark<\/a> gave absolutely stunning premiere performances of my work\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nellshawcohen.com\/transform-the-world-with-beauty\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-cke-saved-href=\"http:\/\/www.nellshawcohen.com\/transform-the-world-with-beauty\/\"><em>Transform the World with Beauty<\/em><\/a>,<em>\u00a0<\/em>which they commissioned for their Spring 2019 program &#8220;Masterpiece&#8221; featuring musical reflections of\u00a0visual art. They recorded my piece during their tour&#8217;s culminating concert on the Georgetown Concert Series in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n<p>In the following video, I&#8217;ve paired the ensemble&#8217;s\u00a0recording\u00a0with texts and images from the Victorian artists\u00a0and poets,Julia Margaret Cameron, Christina Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and William Morris,who inspired my composition.<\/p>\n<p>Watch below (or on YouTube <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/5IuxzC4wd3c\">here<\/a>), and continue reading for my notes about this work.<\/p>\n<h5><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_4ukKrOKXZM\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\nvideo credits<\/h5>\n<p>Performed by Skylark Vocal Ensemble (Matthew Guard, Artistic Director). Audio Recording by Dan Shores.\u00a0Video Editing by Nell Shaw Cohen.<\/p>\n<h5>ABOUT THE Work<\/h5>\n<p><em>Transform the World with Beauty,\u00a0<\/em>an 11-minute work for SATB vocal ensemble in three movements, is inspired by the flowering of visual art and poetry in Victorian Britain during the 1840s-1870s.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/ci4.googleusercontent.com\/proxy\/9LGlhY23ddgY00OqYgPVYSYrR121aMMdqgsWYs8pIKmqclGJDokDTRmz-lYFj9dPnUBw77n1JTPm37HcxmSgInQUEQDnZU0aJD-x5Ynx4Fh6vIH53rpj3um4FZy7Iax27bRhFvtNPMYwoHhXhirme5obi_au9SP6Jdo=s0-d-e1-ft#https:\/\/gallery.mailchimp.com\/4cb5cb83e61e2ff4c679fc7f1\/images\/ff70f6a5-82d3-4036-9007-cc9b85f46f91.png\" alt=\"Julia Margaret Cameron, &quot;Pomona,&quot; 1872\" width=\"208\" height=\"278\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The first movement, \u201cMy First Camera,\u201d\u009d celebrates avant-garde photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron. In my adaptation of an excerpt from Cameron&#8217;s autobiography, this pioneering artist describes the power of her creative impulse when she first took up the camera as a 48-year-old wife and mother. <span style=\"font-size: .8em;\">(Image:\u00a0Julia Margaret Cameron, &#8220;Pomona,&#8221; 1872.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/ci3.googleusercontent.com\/proxy\/eNyze6QY9JQOvQUbIc2FklNMdWLJnkwUsxnPx_pTckW6KMxHLjyNDUrDovfNBnpqUwt6ddn5vIGFGvebOLnxHbSnz7v0hmdTneQ_XFkwRGXSW4cU9GC6bA6d8pk_wpLDkeyhMWS_8FYSt0orzZmBFN2O33k3rOMGTgQ=s0-d-e1-ft#https:\/\/gallery.mailchimp.com\/4cb5cb83e61e2ff4c679fc7f1\/images\/a34ffddc-fd9e-4613-8ec7-44f3732e117d.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"188\" height=\"312\" \/>\u201cIn an Artist&#8217;s Studio\u201d\u009d is a setting of a poem by Christina Rossetti. She offers an incisive, feminist critique of her brother, Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and his obsessive depictions of an idealized woman.\u00a0<span style=\"font-size: .8em;\">(Image:\u00a0Dante Gabriel Rossetti, &#8220;The Annunciation&#8221; (detail), 1849.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/ci6.googleusercontent.com\/proxy\/bNKGUtYu-KCnEdUgfLa7B7JW0iSamhREOupjtmvOYK1fb9KXujBYWk914k9KFohSVK2g3Rjhu27h8MnnaqtY-bAbI8hFbgwG5HBGkJWUYaNQ-3pEFHjNzIkR9DHwvsc-Y7CvFrUy2QdwMRx0rbY88r1NFDRFI8xzdNw=s0-d-e1-ft#https:\/\/gallery.mailchimp.com\/4cb5cb83e61e2ff4c679fc7f1\/images\/2340e3c1-ce2a-437b-9619-4940d25df8d9.jpg\" alt=\"William Morris, &quot;Strawberry Thief&quot; wallpaper design, 1883\" width=\"176\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The final, title movement is inspired by the work and ideas of William Morris. The botanical and mythological titles of Morris&#8217; sensuous textiles and wallpaper designs are juxtaposed with lofty sentiments from his philosophical lectures and essays. These two strands of Morris&#8217; world, disparate at first, come together into a hopeful vision of society \u201ctransformed\u201d\u009d through the beauty of nature and art.\u00a0<span style=\"font-size: .8em;\">(Image: William Morris, &#8220;Strawberry Thief&#8221; wallpaper design, 1883.)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GRAMMY Award-nominated vocal ensemble Skylark gave absolutely stunning premiere performances of my work\u00a0Transform the World with Beauty,\u00a0which they commissioned for their Spring 2019 program &#8220;Masterpiece&#8221; featuring musical reflections of\u00a0visual art. They recorded my piece during their tour&#8217;s culminating concert on the Georgetown Concert Series in Washington, D.C. In the following video, I&#8217;ve paired the ensemble&#8217;s\u00a0recording\u00a0with &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nellshawcohen.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/new-recording-transform-the-world-with-beauty-for-vocal-ensemble\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;New Recording! &#8220;Transform the World with Beauty&#8221; for Vocal Ensemble&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,61],"tags":[81,34,24],"class_list":["post-404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-and-music","category-new-recordings","tag-art-and-music","tag-choral-music","tag-recordings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nellshawcohen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nellshawcohen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nellshawcohen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nellshawcohen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nellshawcohen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nellshawcohen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nellshawcohen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nellshawcohen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nellshawcohen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}