Something About Isolation
November 8 - December 20, 2021
New songs released every Monday at 5:00 pm Pacific Time on YouTube
New songs released every Monday at 5:00 pm Pacific Time on YouTube
ScheduleAll songs will be released at 5:00 pm Pacific Time on YouTube.
November 8: Sick Cycle by Monica Chew November 15: Alone by Catalina von Wrangell November 22: Something About Isolation by Kimberly Osberg November 29: Now Available, libretto by Kendra Preston Leonard, music by Lisa Neher December 6: Stillness by Drew Swatosh December 13: dark waters, air stirs, by Nicole Murphy December 20: Strawberry Man, poem by Kendra Preston Leonard, music by Lisa Neher |
Something About Isolation is a web series of songs and short operas exploring the physical, material, and emotional impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic through unaccompanied solo vocal works using standard and extended vocal techniques, written by living women and nonbinary composers and poets.
Beginning November 8 and concluding on December 20, one song will be released on YouTube every Monday at 5 pm Pacific Time. The series takes viewers on a journey through the last year and a half of pandemic, shut downs, and searching for ways to go on. Sick Cycle addresses the dance of lockdowns and re-openings over a backdrop of clock-like tongue clicks. Alone expresses the tug of war between loneliness and the need for time and space to oneself, while Something About Isolation explores how helping someone else is a form of selfcare. In the monodrama Now Available, a singer faces economic instability and the loss of an artistic outlet due to pandemic cancellations, ultimately finding a source of optimism. Hope that positive changes can come from this difficult time is the subject of Stillness. Dark waters and air stirs paint a vivid picture of emerging from darkness into light, just as many of us are returning to aspects of our lives thanks to vaccination. Finally, Strawberry Man uses claps and stomps as accompaniment to a joyful song about buying fruit from a street vendor under the summer sun—something we all can look forward to. |
About the Artists
Monica Chew is an Oakland pianist and composer. In 2017 she released her first solo album, Tender and Strange, featuring works by Bartók, Janáček, Messiaen, Takemitsu, and Scriabin. A “gifted player with an affinity for deeply sensitive expression” (Whole Note, June/July/August 2018), her playing is “wonderfully delicate, like tissue” (International Pianist, July/August 2018). She has been a featured artist on KVMR, KPFA and radio stations across the United States. She started composing in 2017 and couldn’t be happier about it. Her work has been featured as part of the Gabriela Lena Frank’s Creative Academy for Music’s #GLFCAMGigThruCovid initiative, Hot Air Music Festival 2020, and Left Coast Chamber Ensemble’s Intersection 2019. Her first string quartet, Delayed Send, was premiered by Friction Quartet in November 2020 and reviewed as “monumental” and “stunning” by San Francisco Classical Voice. She loves playing chamber music and received a Zellerbach Family Foundation award for her chamber music work. Prior to 2015, she neglected piano for nearly a decade to work as a principal software engineer on security and privacy at Mozilla and Google after receiving her Master of Music from SF Conservatory of Music and a PhD in computer science from UC Berkeley. She lives in Oakland with her husband, an 1899 Steinway B, a clavichord, and a disused violin. In spring and summer of 2020 she gave free twice-weekly live concerts on her Facebook and YouTube channels.
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Kendra Preston Leonard is a librettist, lyricist, and poet whose work is inspired by history, language, and the mythopoeic. She is the librettist for six operas composed by Lisa Neher, including Par for the Course, Woman Waits with Sword, and Sense of Self. Her chapbook Making Mythology is published by Louisiana Literature Press, and her novella Protectress is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press. Leonard is also a musicologist and music theorist, and her scholarship focuses on women and music in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; and music and screen history. Follow her on Twitter at @K_Leonard_PhD or visit her site at https://kendraprestonleonard.hcommons.org/.
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Australian composer Nicole Murphy’s music has been described as “exquisite, sensitive and delicate”. She is the recipient of various awards, including the ICEBERG International Call for Scores (2017), Nief Norf International Call for Scores (2016), the MAFB International Commissioning Prize (2015), the Theodore Front International Orchestral Prize (2013), and the Definiens C3 International Composer’s Award (2011). She was chosen as the young composer to represent Australia at the 30th Asian Composers League Festival in Tel Aviv (2012). Recently, Nicole was selected as one of six composers to work with Steve Reich in Toronto (2016) as a part of Soundstreams celebrations of his 80th birthday.
Nicole has been commissioned by eminent arts organisations including the Australian Ballet, the Royal Academy of Dance (London), Experiments in Opera/Symphony Space (New York), the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Victoria, Wild Rumpus (San Francisco), Chamber Sounds (Singapore), and the Definiens Project (Los Angeles). Her music has been performed by ensembles such as the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, NOWensemble (New York), Ars Nova (Dallas), and Halcyon (Sydney). She has received performances at numerous festivals including the Atlantic Music Festival (Maine), the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival (Connecticut), the Dallas Festival of Modern Music, the Nief Norf Festival (Tennessee) and the Bowdoin International Music Festival (Maine). Nicole is represented as an Associate Artist by the Australian Music Centre and holds the position of Composer-in-Residence at the Queensland Academy for Creative Industries. She is the inaugural recipient of the Australia Ensemble's Emerging Composer Fellowship (2018). Her music is published by Wirripang and Nicole holds a PhD from the University of Queensland. |
New music powerhouse Dr. Lisa Neher is an award-winning composer, mezzo-soprano, and actress on a mission to transform audiences through sound, story, and vulnerability. Described as a “maestro of beautifully wacky noises” (Oregon ArtsWatch) and a composer of “varied and imitable” vocal lines (Contemporary Classical), Neher writes music inspired by female athleticism, the tender love of friends, the ambiguities of death, and the eerie mystery of deep ocean life. With librettist Kendra Leonard, Neher wrote and produced the One Voice Project Micro-Opera Festival, a weeklong festival of miniature operas released online and hailed as “a great example of grassroots music theatre” (Contemporary Classical). Her EP Of Wind and Waves explores the currents of air, water, and emotions that define our natural and psychological world. Neher’s commissioners include Third Angle New Music, Opera Elect, Opera Theatre Oregon, Coe College Symphony Orchestra, Kirkwood Community College Choirs, the Glass City Singers, tenor Zach Finkelstein, pianist Michael Kirkendoll, and flutist Rose Bishop.
Praised as “a small woman with a very big voice” and “especially alive” (Oregon ArtsWatch), Neher captivates audiences as a performer with her electrifying dramatic commitment and unforgettable vocal colors. She recently performed with Third Angle New Music, the Resonance Ensemble, New Music Gathering, Queer Opera, the International Saxophone Symposium, and Opera Theatre Oregon. Lisa is the curator of the One Voice Project, which champions unaccompanied solo vocal performance. In addition to her creative work, Neher coaches composers and singers. |
Kimberly R. Osberg (b. 1992) is a composer from Eau Claire, Wisconsin who specializes in interdisciplinary collaboration. Her projects have included dance, film, environmental sound installations, instrumental theatre, plays, opera, visual art, award ceremonies, and stage combat. Her music has been described as “brilliant,” “highly-engaging,” “wonderfully suspenseful,” and “intensely colorful,” and has received acclaim from academic, commercial, and public audiences alike. Her collaborations have been hailed as “ambitious” and “pioneering,” and have even inspired collaborators to launch annual opportunities for composers (including the Exponential Ensemble’s Fordham Composers Program). Her work has been featured by Samsung as part of their featured VR experiences, and her recent Commissions from Quarantine project was a feature story in both the Dallas Morning News and WQOW News 18. She is also an active writer, creating original text for over a dozen musical works—including a tone poem for projected text and chamber orchestra (Rocky Summer, Dallas Chamber Symphony), and an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” for her operetta, Thump (New Voices Opera).
During her 3 years in Dallas, TX, Kimberly’s prolific output included collaborations with nearly a dozen DFW-based organizations, musicians, and ensembles, including the Dallas Chamber Symphony, the Dallas Contemporary and artist Ian Davenport, Bruce Wood Dance, Trio Kavanáh, and MAKE. Other notable collaborations include projects with the Pittsburg State University Wind Ensemble, the New Voices Opera company, and the Indiana University Department of Theatre, Drama, and Contemporary Dance (including mainstage shows Macbeth and Prospect Hill, and works for dance and stage combat). Kimberly holds degrees from Luther College (BA) and the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music (MM). She has also attended several premiere festivals as a composition fellow, including the Brevard Music Festival, IRCAM’s ManiFeste, and the Aspen Music Festival. She was also a featured composer for the New Mexico Contemporary Ensemble’s Annual James Tenney Memorial Symposium, and has enjoyed performances from the Orford Festival in Canada, the Oh My Ears New Music Festival, the Madison New Music Festival, and the Women Composers Festival of Hartford. She is now based in Portland, Oregon, where she is finalizing projects for the upcoming season, and attempting to keep a few plants alive. |
Coming from a background in arts integrated education, Drew Swatosh (they/them) strives to create connections within their music, whether through the inclusion of programmatic/extra musical elements; collaborating with other composers, musicians, and artists; and/or combining different musical styles and compositional techniques. They use composing as a means of processing the world around them, which includes social justice, intersectional feminism, climate change, and grief. Drew has been commissioned by the Seattle Opera Creation Lab, Stephanie Bivins (Glacier View Junior High Concert Choir/Aspire Middle School for the Performing Arts); Vancouver School of Arts and Academics Music Department; and composer/soprano/lyricist Carolyn Quick.
An action shot of Drew Swatosh editing a score As a composer, Drew has participated in many different master classes with composers including Martin Bresnick, Dave Metzger, Chen Yi, Gabriel Prokofiev, and Lisa Neher. Beyond master classes, Drew has participated in the Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium, and the Fear No Music Young Composers Project. For their SATB setting of the Poem In Flanders Fields by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, Drew won 1st place in the Washington State Music Teachers Association Young Composers Project. They currently reside in Vancouver, Washington. In addition to composing, Drew is a vocalist, pianist, ukulele player, engraver, and poet. They love women’s soccer and are a tech and fashion enthusiast. They are currently a part of In Medio and studying voice/composition with Lisa Neher. Drew holds a MMus in Contemporary Music and a BMus in Contemporary Music from Western Oregon University and has studied composition with: Kevin Walczyk, James Reddan, Carlos Velez, Bill Whitley, Dave Averre, and Elizabeth Ackerman. |