IAT Projects: SoM

Navid Bargrizan Presentation in Belgium

During the “13th Biennial International Conference on Music since 1900” held at KU Leuven, Belgium, September 13–15, 2024, Navid Bargrizan, Assistant Professor of Musicology at the ECU School of Music, presented his research Project titled “Luigi Nono’s La Fabbrica Illuminata and its Controversial Politics.” This presentation was part of the panel “Nono Centenary.” Bargrizan also chaired the panel “Compositional Research” at this conference. https://www.musicsince1900.org/

Chasing Light: Essential Voices

Commissioning Project with composer

Assistant Professor Dr. Catherine Gardner, soprano (School of Music)
Assistant Professor Jessica Teague, dancer and choreographer (School of Theater and Dance)
Martha Sullivan, composer
Kirsten Holley, piano
Iya Kiya, poet
Nwgatilo Mawiyoo, poet
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, poet
John Dixon, light design and film editing
Morgan Bearup, light board operator
Ashley Floyd, projections operator

“We turn to artists to help us understand and process the challenges of our world. As dancer and
singer, we feel a responsibility to reflect the human experience through our various genres.
Having collaborated to create “Nuits d’été” for ECU’s Spring Dance 2022, we realized that we
have an opportunity to include more diverse artistic voices into the tapestry of the creative work
we do at CFAC, therefore we chose to create a performance piece that combines the artistic
expressions of voice, dance, poetry and musical composition as a way of holding space for
diverse voices and in order to express the emotional context of our current time. Through our
collaborators in Chasing Light, we explore the challenge of coming into being in a world full of
pain and joy. Thank you to CFAC for supporting this program through a RCAA grant.” –
Catherine Gardner & Jessica Teague

POEMS

To hold a needle

to hold a needle of silence in your mouth
to stitch your words in white thread
to whimper while drowning in spit

to keep from screaming spitting blood
to hold the water of a language on your tongue
which leaks like a rusty bucket

to mend things that are still useful
to sew crosses on the really weak spots
like bandages on the wounded in a hospital

to learn to search for the roots of a life
that has yet to learn its name

Iya Kiya (Ukranian)
Translated from the Ukrainian by Amelia Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk, 2019

Come into your own

You are made of more than your name. You are not your ancestor – you are alive, for now, in this
land where sunlight yellows through ashen clouds on still green earth. You are happy in that soft
sun,
you are happier when the rains come.
Your eye turns to seeds, flowers then, resigns to what the weather will do.

By now you know fear as the sharp hammer of ideas in the early morning. You feel them all in
your chest.
By now you know despair

as freedom when it fades, joy as rest, unharried waking, love. By now

you’ve learned your name is more
than you are. You know when you speak it and they search your face.

One day you’ll know you wear
your ancestors’ shoes.
You’ll know that inheritance as gift
and chore, the leather a little elbow grease away from good as new. One day you may

clear the pebbles lodged
long as your line. One day you might
re-sole re-fashion re-stich and make that name yours.

Ngwatilo Mawiyoo (Kenyan)

For when people ask

I want a word that means

okay and not okay,

a word that means

devastated and stunned with joy.

I want the word that says

I feel it all, all at once.

The heart is not like a songbird

singing only one note at a time,

more like a Tuvan throat singer

able to sing both a drone

and simultaneously

two or three harmonics high above it—

a sound, the Tuvans say,

that gives the impression

of wind swirling among rocks.

The heart understands the swirl,

how the churning of opposite feelings

weaves through us like an insistent breeze

leads us wordlessly deeper into ourselves,

blesses us with paradox

so we might walk more openly

into this world so rife with devastation,

this world so ripe with joy.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer (American)
from All the Honey (Samara Press, 2023)

Taiwan Chamber Music Chinese Language and Culture Summer Study Abroad 2023

We had an amazing time in Taiwan this year, the first time in four year we were able to return to Taiwan, post-pandemic. We wish to express our deepest appreciation to Dean Dr. Linda Kean, ECU School of Music Director Christopher Ulffers and former Director and Dean, Dr. Christopher Buddo, Rose Malone, Program Director, ECU Global Affairs and especially to Dr. Jami Leibowitz whose successful grant application to the US State Department made this program possible!

Our US crew of 6 chamber music performers began the adventure by flying together from RDU through San Francisco to Taipei, Taiwan. It was great to be reunited with our study buddies, who we had met online in 2022 and five of whom visited ECU in February 2023 for a stellar chamber music concert with ECU students and faculty. We were treated to a delicious dinner at a local restaurant. Our hosts at the University of Taipei conservatory provided a lovely orientation and luncheon on our first day, where Flute faculty/Dean Sabina Chiang introduced administrators and UT program faculty. After lessons, practice and combined UT/ECU rehearsals on the first full day we got Metro cards, rode the MRT subway trains and discovered a traditional night market with all kinds of specialty foods. Our crew settled in and acclimated very well. We were situated in a hotel close to exciting Midtown Taipei, where we held our Pirates Abroad formal dinner at a delicious and exotic hot pot restaurant.

We attended several musical performances while we were in Taiwan. We heard among others Professor Sabina Chiang and her flute, harp and viola trio, a student woodwind quintet supported by a special Taipei “Bank of the Arts” in a dramatic musical show for families with children, and the fabulous Taipei Symphony Orchestra at the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Concert Hall. Oboist Troy Williamson was able to attend the masterclass of Dominik Wollenweber, the third oboe and English horn of the Berlin Philharmonic. Finally, our joint concert on May 25, 2023, together with students and faculty from the University of Taipei, was a complete success! Administration, faculty and study buddies all worked together to create an amazing program with a large public audience that was very well received!

During our last week in Taiwan, we were treated to a very special dinner featuring native Taiwanese cuisine by University of Taipei Flute faculty and Dean, Professor Sabina Shu-Chun Chiang and her husband, flutist Anders Norell, Principal Flute of the Taiwan National Symphony Orchestra, a beautiful group event. Some of our other adventures in Taiwan—Calligraphy class for students, trips to the Shihlin Night Market, the Taipei Weekend Jade Market, and a day trip by high-speed rail to Taichung, Taiwan, where we toured the music department and explored the campus of Tunghai University. Again, we were treated to lunch by TU administration.

Our last post-concert experience in Taiwan was to tour the famous Taipei 101 tower with its fantastic 360-degree views, with a class farewell dinner that night, joined by ECU graduate Pei-Yi Ho (MM ECU, 2020, organ performance/church music). Tuesday was packing and last minute shopping, followed by a final get-together at the hotel with study buddies, who accompanied us to the airport this morning. In an interesting coincidence: While we were at the Denver airport on layover, Dean/flute faculty Sabina Chiang sent a photo from the NAFSA conference in Washington, DC, where she met up with Dr Jon Rezek, ECU Assistant Vice-Chancellor of Global Affairs and the Director of Education Abroad for ECU, Katie Erickson. She was able to show them photos from our joint concert on May 25th, which they very much enjoyed. NAFSA promotes and provides a venue for universities from all over the world to meet and discuss possibilities for international exchange.

We were tremendously honored by the degree of hospitality and constant care shown to us. We made lifelong friends and are already working toward future collaboration. We remain most grateful to East Carolina University Global Affairs for their constant support.

Please see photo captions below for more information:

1 Taiwan Students Arrive in Greenville 1-31-23