Recital: Miranda Ingram Agnew '22 MM, Jazz Trumpet

Improvisation

Isabel Crespo Pardo, voice
Eden Girma, voice, electronics
Maya Keren, piano, voice
Anna Abondolo, double bass

Miranda Ingram Agnew | Quartet

Rahul Carlberg, piano
David Macchione, double bass
Alex Yoo, drums

Miranda Ingram Agnew

so long
as we climb

Lemuel Marc, trumpet
Ariel Vera, voice
Olivia Wilkins-Becker, guitar
Samantha Reiss, double bass
Kabir Adhiya-Kumar, drums

Texts

so long

please help me not
think about you
knowing that
it will be
so long
building scars
look ahead
until it is
so long again

 

as we climb

won’t you walk by my side
if we make a mess
I know you’re tired
but as we climb
we reach for the roots
twisted vines
each year
grow a chocolate bloom
bitter and firm
you’ll always be
there for me

Program note

Some notes about the music

A little over two years ago, just after arriving in Amsterdam to study for a semester, I started reading Life After Life, a book written by Kate Atkinson, a somewhat cynical, beautifully vivid British author with a biting sense of humor. Life After Life is the story of Ursula, a girl born just a few years before the beginning of World War I, who lives her life over, and over, and over again. Each time she dies no matter when or where, she is born again, in 1910, to the same family, in the same house in the English countryside, carrying only subconscious, embodied memories of what came before.
        Life After Life seeped into my unfamiliar life in Amsterdam, accompanying me on rainy bike rides across the city, quiet moments in my small bedroom, and unnecessarily confusing shopping trips to Dutch grocery stores - it captured me in a way I’ll never forget.
        The book isn’t about magic or fantasy, it’s about getting to know Ursula and those that surround her through Atkinson’s matter of fact, yet strikingly tender, telling of a multitude of satisfying, entertaining, or unfathomably painful moments that are rendered invisible by yet another death, and yet another beginning, yet shape everything that Ursula is and becomes.
        In tonight’s concert, I consider the broader implications of Life After Life: both the concept of cyclical return and the reality that structures, events, or moments that are obscured or invisible to us are often the most consequential in shaping how we move through the world.
        I use the concept of cycles and return as compositional tools, creating structures that can be layered and repeated, or diverge onto parallel yet contrasting paths. Certain pieces also consider the role recurring patterns have played in my own life, in the way I’ve embodied both my own emotional experiences, and the experiences of my family across generations.
        As improvisers, cyclical melodies allow us to revisit the same material over and over again with new approaches. We also play with the connections between visibility, obscurity, impact and evolution, exploring how listening to the underpinnings of a musical moment can influence our improvisational direction.
        Just over a month after I finished reading Life After Life, the COVID pandemic began, and as we moved through a world of increasing tragedy and unfamiliarity, the book eerily recalled the fact that, though we experience it so differently today, even this happened before (Ursula dies and lives through the Spanish Flu innumerable times). I chose to use Life After Life as an inspiration for my recital because it served as a larger reminder of something about what it means to be human - that we are extraordinary and insignificant and enduring and fleeting all at the same time.
        Thank you for being here!
 

 “…….although yes, most of us in this little loud chaotic shoebox full of gadgets will be forgotten, once we have lost our form. After all, mortality is just a shell that withers into specks of the infinite.”
–Nicole Mitchell, “What Was Feared Lost” from Arcana VIII

“All prayers are to Self
And, in one way or another,
All prayers are answered.
Pray,
But beware.
Your desires,
Whether or not you achieve them
Will determine who you become.”
–Octavia Butler, Parable of the Talents

“It became a clear imperative
to write plus... a third piano added to 1+1
now 1+1+1

To put things in a little different light
I can make a yo-yo hesitate,
but to suspend a flower in mid-air
without a stem
his is more like six hands or thirty fingers
more or less trying to do whatever”
– Henry Threadgill, Album Notes  from Double Up, Plays Double Up Plus

Thank you to my numerous amazing teachers at NEC,
including Stratis Minakakis, Anthony Coleman, Jason Moran, Melissa Aldana,
Frank Carlberg, Dominique Eade, Miguel Zenón, and Jason Palmer.

Thank you to Kris Davis, Vijay Iyer, and Claire Chase for their mentorship.

Thank you to Octavia Butler, Nicole Mitchell, and Henry Threadgill
(from whom I have included some pieces of wisdom in the program)
as well as Kate Atkinson and the countless other creators
who have changed the way I think about the world.

Thank you to each one of my friends and collaborators,
from NEC and beyond, who have been so loving and supportive
during the process of putting this recital together
- it has meant the world to me to get to know and make music
with all of you over the past years.

Thank you to the production team at NEC for making sure student recitals run smoothly.

Thank you to David for being the person I can talk to about anything,
and to my entire family for loving and valuing music.

Thank you to my Mom and Dad for supporting me unconditionally and always being there.