• A WELCOME FROM FIRSTWORKS
• PROGRAM NOTES
• A MEDITATION ON LETTING GO BY JACK KORNFIELD (opens in new tab)
• ABOUT FIRSTWORKS
• SPONSOR CREDITS

WELCOME FROM THE EXECUTIVE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF FIRSTWORKS

With your presence, MASARY’s multi-media convergence of media, audio, text, and choral performance becomes a living installation. Changed by your presence, witnessing, and reflection. Animating space with live art not only illuminates the spaces of Grace Church, and the heart of downtown Providence, but shines a light into our own beings.

The ‘first work” you are experiencing – Recursion & Release – is the culmination of years of dreaming and planning. We are proud to celebrate these artists and Providence, the Creative Capital, and grateful to the vision of Rhode Island Commerce, ACT, and NEFA in supporting the arts as a strategy to strengthen our city and state.

FirstWorks is counting down to our 20th anniversary as a proud contributor to the cultural landscape of Providence and Rhode Island. These twenty years have been inspired by risk-takers who dare to push boundaries, provoke, challenge and uplift us. I count among those our amazing FirstWorks Team and the artists of MASARY.

Thank you for your openness and hunger for cultural experiences. Wishing for peace and joy as we near the darkest nights of the year.

We look forward to sharing global journeys in the arts ahead as we celebrate FirstWorks at 20 in 2024.

Kathleen Pletcher
Executive Artistic Director and Founder
FirstWorks

RECURSION AND RELEASE

A NEW MULTIMEDIA INSTALLATION BY

COMMISSIONED BY FIRSTWORKS

On view December 1-3, 2023, 5-9 PM
Live vocal ensemble performance December 2, 5-9 PM
Grace Church, 300 Westminster Street, Downtown Providence, Rhode Island

FirstWorks presents a site-specific performance installation, Recursion and Release, commissioned from Boston’s MASARY Studios, to premiere at the historic Grace Church during downtown Providence’s Three Nights of Lights celebration. MASARY’s immersive work explores three environments at the Grace Church campus through an acoustic vocal ensemble, digital audio manipulation, video projection and dynamic lighting. The experience features a new composition for vocal ensemble by pioneering composer, bandleader, and multi-instrumentalist Kitty Brazelton, drawing text from a guided meditation by Jack Kornfield entitled “Letting Go.”

Read the meditation, “Letting Go” [opens in new tab]

Photosensitivity Warning: Bright lights will be used at this event

Courtyard

In the Courtyard, experience being in the center of the performance with the vocal ensemble moving around you. Light fixtures at each of the eight speakers illuminate in response to the performance, creating a spatialized audio and light experience.

Pavilion

In the Pavilion, the vocal performance is transformed using a variety of sound processing techniques that are driven by the vocalist’s voices themselves. Using custom real-time audio analysis software, the sonic characteristics of each performer’s voice affects how the audio is transformed. Video projection on the interior of the Pavilion also responds in real-time to the sonic experience. The result is an audio / visual immersive experience that envelops the audience in the sonic and visual composition.

Sanctuary

On Saturday, December 2, the vocal ensemble will be performing live in the historic Sanctuary. Featuring five vocalists, the live performance flows into the Pavilion and Courtyard throughout the evening.

ABOUT MASARY

MASARY Studios is a transdisciplinary artist collective reconsidering environments through site-specific installations using sound, light, interactivity, and performance. Based in Boston, the studio’s practice includes live percussion performance, electronic music and production, video projection, artistic research, technology and materials fabrication, and the expansive use of animation. The studio is artist-owned and managed and was founded in 2015. Learn more at masarystudios.com.

ABOUT KITTY BRAZELTON

For pioneering NYC composer, bandleader, and multi-instrumentalist Kitty Brazelton, music is personal, and the personal is universal. Brazelton’s latest recording project “the world is not ending—we’ve been here before” COVID Choirs Project brings six works—like “STORM”, a retranslation of 3rd-c. BCE Psalm 104 to face the rising seas, extreme weather, fires and floods of climate change—into immersive audio, with over 75 singers and instrumentalists recorded individually all over the world. Brazelton confronts the creeping erosion of identity in our algorithmic lives with I am not my Photograph (you cannot erase me), premiered by L. A.-based all-woman Isaura String Quartet. A cappella Essential Prayers Project quietly revisits the tradition of prayer in intimate house concert settings, making powerful words of hurt and hope accessible to everyone in the room. Award-winning opera The Art of Memory turns anthemic St. Augustine’s ever prescient message “now is all there is.”

VOCALIST BIOS

BARBARA HILL
Barbara is a multi-genre, multi-era performing and recording artist. Recent solo performances include Mozart’s Requiem, and Britten’s The Company of Heaven, as well as featured appearances with Seven Times Salt, and the Cambridge Midwinter Revels. Ensemble affiliations include Emmanuel Music, The Crossing, and Nightingale Vocal Ensemble. Highlighted contemporary premieres include Julia Wolfe’s Fire in my mouth with the NY Philharmonic and The Crossing, and Heidi Breyer’s Amor Aeternus at Carnegie Hall. barbaraahill.com

TERI KOWIAK
Known for her versatility and vocal agility, mezzo-soprano Teri Kowiak’s repertoire runs the musical gamut from the music of the middle ages to brand-new compositions. She founded and leads medieval ensemble Meravelha and Night Song ensemble Lux Arcana, and her resume includes numerous world premieres and first recordings. No stranger to musical creation herself, she has committed music to paper as a composer and arranger and is a fearless improviser. www.terikowiak.com

ERIC CHRISTOPHER PERRY
Lauded by the Boston Classical Review for his “expressive energy and ringing high notes,” deemed “sweet and appealing” by The Boston Globe, and complimented for his “clear and even tone” by New York Arts, Eric Christopher Perry has earned an international reputation as a conductor, vocal artist, and educator. Learn more at ecpmusic.com, and about Renaissance Men, New England’s professional male vocal chamber ensemble for which he serves as Artistic Director, at renmenmusic.com.

STEPHAN GRIFFIN
Stephan Griffin, Director of Music at All Saints Parish in Brookline, Massachusetts, is a versatile musician with degrees in vocal and organ performance from Boston University and The University of Texas at Austin. He has held positions at Trinity Church Newport, RI, Brown University, and served the Association of Anglican Musicians. Upcoming appearances include performances with Schola Cantorum of Boston, Ensemble Altera, Seraphim Singers, and The Pioneer Valley Symphony.

NATHAN HALBUR
In an eclectic career, bass-baritone and composer Nathan Halbur has performed with Esperanza Spalding in the world premiere of Wayne Shorter’s opera …(Iphigenia), embodied Dr. Seuss’s Grinch for the Boston Pops, and sung numerous works by J.S. Bach (and others) with Emmanuel Music, Boston Baroque, and Cantata Singers. Upcoming performances include a Christmas concert tour with Grammy-nominated ensemble Skylark, and directing a project called PHOTOPLAY (involving free improvisation and experimental film) with Nightingale Vocal Ensemble.

ABOUT FIRSTWORKS

FirstWorks is a non-profit based in Providence, Rhode Island whose purpose is to build the cultural, educational and economic vitality of its community by engaging diverse audiences with world-class performing arts and education programs. Since 2004, FirstWorks festivals, performances and programs have attracted more than 700,000 participants. Central to FirstWorks’ mission is creating access to the arts and connecting the community with significant creators of our time such as Yo-Yo Ma, Urban Bush Women, Kronos Quartet and scores of local performers. FirstWorks’ education program harnesses the power of the arts and experiential learning to help over 2,000 youth annually succeed in school, life and work. Embracing collaboration, FirstWorks has fostered over 90 community partnerships across business, social service, government, arts and education sectors. As the founding partner of PVDFest, FirstWorks collaborates with the City of Providence to curate and produce the City’s free signature arts celebration, which has employed over 4,000 local luminary artists since its inception. Visit firstworks.org to learn more.

FOR FIRSTWORKS STAFF LIST AND BOARD OF DIRECTORS – CLICK HERE

FUNDING CREDITS

Funded in part by the New England States Touring program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts Regional Touring Program and the six New England state arts agencies.

Made possible with support from Rhode Island Commerce.

Special thanks to Grace Episcopal Church of Providence.