Sombra y Plata

The curtain is drawn and you peer expectantly through a window into her world. Edgar Allen Poe reads her bedtime stories, but she seems equally fathered and adored by certain old composers who, like Magi, visit from time to time with gifts of music and song. She treats the songs reverently--a bit possessively--as inspired by the exotic and pastoral as by the scamps and lovers. Secrets and experiences glimmer from within the measures of music, and she longs to follow.

You watch her tuck Pan's flute under the strap of her shoe and, together, you depart for the sea. She dances as if in a David Lynch movie, a minimalist jazz dance that charms the poets, the birds, and the pretty bees. She is loved; she is scorned; she is thrown into the sea. But she will not remain submerged.

Soon enough, she begins to write the songs and tell the stories, and you fall asleep at her feet, dreaming her dreams and sailing her seas until, in still and silence, you find yourself returned. Tú regresas a la tierra.

Sombra y Plata | Shadow and Silver is a work by Anne Hege (voice, flute, electronics) and Heather Heise (piano, voice, toy piano, accordion) with:

Charles Ives, Memories A
Anne Hege, Annabel Lee (text by Edgar Allen Poe)
Manuel M. Ponce, Tres Morillas
Erik Satie, Avant-Dernières Pensées
Benjamin Britten, "Johnny" & "Funeral Blues" from Cabaret Songs
Luciano Berio, "Dolce Cominciamento" & "Ballo" from Canzoni Popolari
Claude Debussy, Syrinx
Manolo Blahnik, footwear
Percy Grainger, Six Dukes Went A Fishin'
Kitty Brazelton, Lookin' for Honey
Anne Hege, Submerge & The Guide
Charles Ives, The Swimmers
John Cage, The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs