FEATURED RELEASE
Cycles of Resistance by Chelsea Hollow
Cycles of Resistance is an album featuring 24 art songs for voice and piano commissioned by soprano, Chelsea Hollow. The music and texts create a journey through international resistance movements over the last 120 years.
These songs represent diverse perspectives and languages not yet common in the classical canon: Mandarin, Dutch, Turkish, Arabic, Sanskrit, and Czech in addition to English, chronicling examples of human resilience: Chinese feminist poetry from the early 1900s; a Dutch sonnet on love conquering all evils; the unity of young Czech girls imprisoned in Room 28 at Theresienstadt Internment Camp; a reminder that all humans are part of the disability community at some point in their lives; maternal hesitation, clarity, and urgency in the Flint, Michigan water crisis; harrowing tales of the Turkish Femicide; Prayers of Peace from the traditions of Islam and Hinduism; & inspiring speeches by U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and activist Valarie Kaur.
Recorded at 25th Street Recording Studio in Oakland, CA, the album features soprano Chelsea Hollow and pianist Taylor Chan. Some works also incorporate vocoder, looper pedal, modular synthesizer, and fixed media. Setting the poetry, speeches, and mantras are composers Niloufar Nourbakhsh, Sophie Xuefei Zhang, Anthony R. Green, Michael Wiener, Molly Joyce, Lauren McCall, Jason Cady, Özden Gülsün, and Myron Silberstein. From intimate moments of vocal and piano restraint, lush harmonic textures and sweeping coloratura melodies to looped vocal layering, vocoded harmonic expansion, and techno-inspired synth tracks; this album celebrates the extensive range of soundscapes possible in contemporary classical music.