EOS Project Concert: Reflections

The EOS Project returns to the BMC Sunday, June 11. The 4 p.m. concert, titled “Reflections,” is an exploration of compelling stories and wide-ranging musical styles of expression.  Some of the pieces on the program explore story narratives of motherhood, the meaning of “home,” the experiences of enslaved people, and cultural identity.  Others take their inspiration from poems such as U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adeboʼs “We Shine Bright,” Walt Whitman’s “A Farm Picture,” and Fred D’Aguiar’s “Wish.”  The program also highlights the relationship between language and music with three songs from Japanese composers who merged Western classical music forms with the tonal richness of the Japanese language.

The performance will include Allison Loggins-Hull’s Homeland and Shine; Valerie Coleman’s Wish; Ananda Sukarlan’s Ménage à trois for Flute, Viola and Piano; Ulysses Kay’s Sonata; Kosaku Yamada’s Karatachi No Hana; Ikuma Dan’s Higurashi; and Yoshinao Nakada’s Oyasumi.

Performers are Ashleigh Gordon, viola; Robin Matathias, flute; Susan Dedell, piano; and Junko Watanabe, soprano.

About the EOS Project
What do great composers look like? Where do they come from? How we answer these questions is the focus of the EOS (Educate • Open • Strengthen) Project. Created at the BMC in the spring of 2020, the Project’s mission is to open new doors and allow our community to explore what and who we’ve been missing—namely, composers who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color as well as those who identify as anything other than cis male.

The ability to write complex, evocative musical works belongs to no one race or gender, a fact that has long been obscured by the traditional canon. But there is an extensive list of gifted composers—from contemporaries of the acknowledged “great composers” to living, emerging artists today—who have created powerful works of depth and grace for as long as music has existed. EOS, under the direction of Heather Sommerlad, and with the participation of BMC faculty and area musicians, seeks out this unjustly neglected music to study and perform in a spirit of social justice and a desire to add to our understanding of great art.