A restless collective of medieval experimentalists, the Flatbush-based band Alkemie recently gained recognition beyond Brooklyn with their soundtrack for the video game Pentiment (directed by Obsidian studios and published by Xbox) and their albums a fine companion and Love to My Liking. Locally and nationally, they have been presented by the Amherst Early Music Festival, Arizona Early Music Society, Brooklyn Public Library, Cambridge Society for Early Music, the Berkeley Early Music Festival, Five Boroughs Music Festival, Johns Hopkins Program in Arts, Humanities & Health, Music Before 1800, and the European Early Music Network virtual Early Music Day festival.
A WORTHY MIRROR represents a time-traveling dialogue with the 12th-century trobairitz–the feminine counterpart of the poet-composers known as troubadours. Together with Amanda Gookin (of Forward Music Project), we commissioned eleven female and non-binary composers to respond to and converse with the 36 extant trobairitz texts (of which we only have music for one). This body of lyric poetry represents a large group of historically female and anonymous femme voices in the literary tradition. Witty, ironic, heartbreaking, and erotic—these texts present a mirror to reflect upon what feels foreign about the past and what feels familiar, what is the role of gender and self in relationships, and how do we make space for the multiplicities of identity, both in the 12th century and today.
In collaboration with video artist Charles Mueller, we created videos for each composition that interpolate footage imagined and captured by Alkemie in our surrounding Brooklyn neighborhoods, juxtaposing whimsical and arresting symbolic imagery with the Occitan poetry + studio recording that forms the foundation of this project. Join us in NYC or online to view and celebrate the culmination of this project!
With Tracy Cowart (voice, harps), Amanda Gookin (cello) Ben Matus (voice, bagpipes, recorder), David McCormick (vielle), Sian Ricketts (voice, douçaines, recorders), Niccolo Seligmann (vielles, scheitholt, psaltery), and Elisa Sutherland (voice).
This digital concert premiere will be screened on November 7 at 7:00 p.m. in Ridgewood, NY. The concert will be available to view online through November 30. To reserve tickets and for more information, please visit alkemie.org/events.
