Residency Concert: The Music of Fay Victor
New England Conservatory’s Contemporary Musical Arts program welcomes acclaimed composer Fay Victor for a residency capped by a concert. The Music of Fay Victor on Tuesday, April 11 features CMA students and faculty in collaboration with Victor, performing her works as well as original student compositions.
Fay Victor is an improvising vocalist, composer, lyricist and educator riding all the chasms and seams of musics that are improvisational and conversational in nature. A Brooklyn-based sound artist/composer, she hones a unique vision for the vocalist’s role in jazz and improvised music. Victor utilizes a distinctive vocalizing, language and performing approach with the foundation of the jazz vocal idiom, now encompassing an “everything is everything” aesthetic, bringing in references that span the globe. Victor
sees the vocal instrument in itself as full of possibilities for sound exploration, the voice a direct and powerful conduit for language and messages in an improvising context. All of these ideas aim to push the vocal envelope to forge greater expressive possibilities. In Victor’s 10 critically acclaimed albums as a leader one can hear the through line of expansive expression leading up to her most recent release, BARN SONGS (Northern Spy Records) with her Chamber Trio featuring Darius Jones (alto saxophone); Marika
Hughes (cello).
Fay Victor | Road Trip to Somewhere
Survivors Breakfast
Ariel Vera, voice
Seth Goldman, bassoon
Christopher Ferrari, soprano saxophone
Mattias Kaufmann, accordion
Álvaro Emiliano López, electric guitar
Grant Beale, 8-string electric guitar
Alexander Matheson, piano
Alex Yoo, drums
Anthony Coleman, director
Fay Victor | Breathe Them In
composed for Eden MacAdam-Somer
Eden MacAdam-Somer, voice, violin
Program note
Breathe Them In is a piece about climate change, specifically how we will lose trees around the planet, how we need to value the now when we can still see and breathe intrees. The text is used in a number of ways throughout the piece which is clear in score (broken down below as well). Please experiment with the parameters in play aswell as suggest ideas/approaches that will work. The text never has to be completelyused in any of the open/improvised sections unless the player desires to do so.
– Fay VictorImprovisation | Across the Chasm
Emily Mitchell, voice
Moyu Zhang, pianoProgram note
The beginning represents unsurpassable distance and the turmoil of loneliness. The chaos of life then begins to fade as a small whisper is heard, clearer and clearer. The way becomes known and the divide is broken, a bridge forms over the chasm. The other side is peaceful and every need is supplied; there is perfect contentment and abundant joy. The response is a constant striving to know in deeper and deeper ways the One who has rescued the heart that was once longing for and now overflowing with life.
– Emily Michell, Moyu ZhangFay Victor | Call for Community & Time Waits.Not
Joe Morris Ensemble
Caleb Schmale, Sam Childs, soprano saxophone
Yoona Kim, ajaeng
Grant Beale, Olivia Becker, guitar
Adrian Chabla, piano
Solomon Caldwell, bass
Noah Mark, drums
Joe Morris, directorINTERMISSION
Improvisation | En Español
Delfina Cheb Terrab, voice
Álvaro Emiliano López, percussion, guitarProgram note
When I first moved to Boston eight years ago, my dad gifted me a cutout from an issue of Playboy magazine with the story “The Other” by Jorge Luis Borges on it. In a bench by the Charles River, a blind Borges serendipitously meets his “other” self. The “other” is younger, he speaks French, he is proud to live in exile, he speaks vigorously about politics, about God, about the Russians, even about himself. As they talk literature, philosophy, and geography, he realizes meeting “the other” is nothing but a metaphor for the uprooting of his own self. What does he sound like in French? How did he sound when he liked being himself in French? Why has that changed? Which one is the true Borges?
– Álvaro Emiliano LópezEmiliano and I became friends in Spanish. We started playing together and sharing meals and dancing and complaining and crying and laughing—all of it because of one thing: we felt the need to perform our Spanish-speaking selves as much as possible. We also observed each other perform our English, sometimes with enthusiasm, sometimes with bitterness, sometimes with hope, sometimes with discomfort. We saw each other perform our English at cafes, at parties, at poetry readings, at rehearsals, at airports, with teachers, with cops, with friends, with Americans, with foreigners, with ourselves, with each other. As I walk by the Charles River I think about el Rio de la Plata, about el Rio Magdalena and el Canal de Xochimilko and about all of the streams of water that have merged to create this sunny Tuesday at theConservatory’s cafeteria: “Delfi, encontre a alguien mas que habla español!” Emi tells me as he smiles.
– Delfina Cheb TerrabArtists- Delfina Cheb Terrab, voice
- Álvaro Emiliano López, percussion, guitar
Fay Victor / SoundNoiseFunk | We’ve Had Enough
ContemporaryRock Ensemble
Kayden Carter, voice
Yoona Kim, voice, ajaeng
Weza Jamison-Neto, bass trombone
Moyu Zhang, piano
Álvaro Emiliano López, guitar
Karl Henry, bass
Noah Mark, drums
Lautaro Mantilla, directorProgram note
This piece is a re-composition made by the Contemporary RockEnsemble based on material from the second album of Fay Victor’sSoundNoiseFunk Band. The sound exploration, form, and groove inthis piece is inspired by Victor’s methodologies of improvisation, her creative vocal experimentation and herartistic sensibility.
Fay Victor | Factions
CMA Chamber Ensemble
Litha Ashforth, Delfina Cheb Terrab, voice
Itay Dayan, clarinet
Eden MacAdam-Somer, violin
Yoona Kim, ajaeng
Roman Barten-Sherman, guitar
Jamie Eliot, electric bass
Solomon Caldwell, bass
Eden MacAdam-Somer, directorHerbie Nichols | Shuffle Montgomery
Fay Victor, voice
Anthony Coleman, piano
Solomon Caldwell, bass
Alex Yoo, drumsBillie Holiday / Herbie Nichols | Lady Sings the Blues
Fay Victor, voice
Anthony Coleman, pianoFay Victor | Disintegration Scenario
Nikita Manin, Itay Dayan, clarinet
Michele Zimmerman, Carson McHaney, violin
Karl Henry, Hayley Yu Qin, cello
Mattias Kaufmann, accordion
Álvaro Emiliano López, Roman Barten-Sherman, guitar
Agne Giedraityte, piano, voice
Solomon Caldwell, bass
Alex Yoo, drums
