Soon the the public will hear what FAWN’s new chamber opera Cells of Wind (tickets here!) will sound like for the first time. Getting to this point has been seven years in the making and so naturally this is an exciting moment. If you aren’t excited already, allow me to introduce you to two of the folks that were foundational in the development of the work, composer Anna Höstman, and librettist, Oana Avasilichoaei, and I got the opportunity to ask a bit about the making of Cells of Wind.
Anna Höstman is the composer of Cells of Wind. Her work has a contemplative sensitivity, often ruminating on remembering, forgetting, and how memory fragments over time. Writing frequently for mixed chamber ensembles, her music is textural balancing sweet stillnesses with cacophony, and can often ride the line between pitch and noise. I really enjoy her work for solo violin Water Walking which drew inspiration from Anishnabe activists who walked from Matane, Quebec to Madeline Island, Wisconsin carrying a bowl of water to draw attention to the importance of water, and our responsibility to protect it. Joining Anna in making Cells of Wind is Oana Avasilichioaei a multifaceted artist working in poetry, photography, moving image, sound and more, who wrote the libretto for the opera. Oana’s work frequently covers difficult subjects in exciting, visceral multimedia performances. Check out this performance which features work from her book Eight Track, and explores subjects including the omnipresence of surveillance, and the use of military drones.
I got the opportunity to ask Anna and Oana about their experience making Cells of Wind together. Oana was the person who initially brought forward the idea to make a piece covering the issue of solitary confinement, drawing on the experiences of Lena Constante’s experience as a political prisoner. Though the opera does center around incarceration, particularly solitary confinement, Anna tells me it explores more universal themes — “Cells of Wind explores vulnerability, love, pain, silence, the oppression of time, and the social isolation brought on by solitary confinement… [it] is essentially dealing with the essential human need for connection in situations where connection has broken down or is being denied.” Oana expands: “ [it is] about an incarcerated woman who survives the ordeal of her solitary incarceration and retains her personhood through the power of her imagination and ability to escape the confines of her cell and live in the boundless expanse of her mind.”
Despite a decades long career in writing, this was Oana’s first time writing a libretto, which was exciting for her, but also posed some unique challenges:
“I was aware of the fact that I needed to write a text that would provide a kind of scaffold, a starting point and possible directions, yet be open and expansive enough that it could subsequently welcome, transform, and evolve through the music, the instrumentalists, the singers’ bodies and voices, the staging, the lighting, the costumes, etc,”
Anna shared some similar thoughts about her challenges writing the music:
“I made many sketches in traditional notation… [but] the music wasn’t feeling genuine to me. Traditional notation couldn’t give me what I was reaching for, which was to give the singers and musicians more of a creative role in the piece. Especially because the underlying theme of the opera is about the denial of freedom, I felt uncomfortable asking performers to express music in a fixed way.”
Honouring these feelings, Anna opted to make a graphic score, which gave a lot of agency to the performers to interpret. Oana shared: “I am absolutely thrilled with the exciting, innovative graphic score that she has composed, which I feel encapsulates and imagines the material, subjects, and ideas in extremely effective and compelling ways”
Anna hopes this opera “awakens and inspires more empathy, care and understanding for those in our society who are suffering” while Oana hopes audiences have a visceral experience of the destructive aspects of solitary, but also leave “hopeful knowing that it is possible to survive and retain a sense of self and autonomy through one’s creative abilities and imagination”
The pair make for a wonderful team for Cells of Wind, expanding beyond a piece just about solitary confinement, but also one of survival and the power of imagination as a tool for escape. They bring a sensitivity and seriousness to the piece, with their complimentary aesthetic expressions. Come hear it yourself, 7pm, January 29, at the Registry Theatre in Downtown Kitchener. Get your tickets here!
Written by:
Andrew Jacob Rinehart (they/he)
(guest writer)
Bio:
Andrew Jacob Rinehart is a harp player, music educator, curator, and interdisciplinary artist, working in sound, painting, installation, and experimental events. These days they are looking to their Ukrainian heritage to re-skill, remember art making practices of the past that were fundamentally in harmony with Earth, and redefine their artistic practice. Andrew’s work is about exploring, and building relationships – with tools, materials, friends, neighbours, Plants, Animals, Land and Water. Their current projects include making paint from found and foraged materials, a series of paintings that explore their relationship to Land and place as a queer settler rediscovering their Ukrainian culture, low-tech sound installation experiments, and social events using music as a medicine for social isolation. When not working on their own projects, Andrew nurtures budding creatives learning music through the harp.