Friday, April 30 at 7:30 PM
About When I Sing
What happens when we create together? And what happens when girls lead the journey? This year, in a special first time collaboration, Intercultural Journeys (IJ) and Sister Cities Girlchoir (SCG) embarked on a multi-month project of discovery and creation.
Over the course of six months, the SCG students created a collaborative musical and spoken word work. Their journey started with guidance from lead poet Denice Frohman, by focusing on legacies of resistance and persistence by women and girls across genres, including the legacy of the voice, attempted silencing, and powerful advocacy of Philadelphia born-and-raised, world renowned opera singer Marian Anderson. Taking cues from strong female role models, the SCG youth explored sisterhood, intergenerational relationships, and the power of giving voice to your own unique story through music as they worked with multiple composers to create a new musical work.
The work blossomed in the spring, and after creating an overarching narrative with guidance from videographer Stephanie Malson, students recorded their individual parts at home, and IJ wove them together in the form of a vibrant virtual performance.
In addition to work from the students, poet Denice Frohman and composer Ruth Naomi Floyd add in work that fits the theme, celebrating powerful womanhood and artistry here in Philadelphia.
About Sister Cities Girlchoir
Sister Cities Girlchoir (SCG) builds communities of music makers that empower girls to occupy their unique position in creating a better world. SCG is an El-Sistema-inspired organization that employs the power of collaboration, creativity, and community while eliminating access barriers to music training and global sisterhood. The program is research-based, and although a music program is an uncommon girl empowerment tool, SCG is modeled on the powerful impact that investments in the lives of girls make for a city block, a neighborhood, a city, and for the world. SCG has performed for audiences at Carnegie Hall, The Smithsonian Institute, The Kimmel Center, Citizens Bank Park, The Union League, National Constitution Center, The Barnes Foundation, National Great Blacks in Wax Museum and throughout local communities.
About Denice Frohman
Photo: Nicholas Nichols.
A poet, performer, and educator, Denice is a CantoMundo Fellow, and has received residencies and awards from the National Association of Latino Arts & Cultures, Leeway Foundation, Blue Mountain Center, and Millay Colony. Her work has appeared in Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color and ESPNW, and garnered over 10 million views online. A former Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion, she’s featured on national and international stages from The Apollo to The White House, and over 200 colleges and universities. She has a Master’s in Education and co-organizes #PoetsforPuertoRico. She lives in Philadelphia.
About Ruth Naomi Floyd
Vocalist and composer Ruth Naomi Floyd has "an unmistakable emotional integrity that conveys her music's power.” (The Times London)
Photo: Robert Carter Photography
In 2020, Ruth was a Kimmel Center Jazz Residency artist. Recent compositions include the commissioned work “Freedom," focused on human rights activist Mende Nazer’s story of survival as a slave, and the Frederick Douglass Jazz Works, a body of compositions for jazz septet. In the centennial year of Leonard Bernstein’s birth, the Mann Music Center, in partnership with NEWorks Productions commissioned Ruth as one of four composers to create a community mass inspired by Bernstein’s MASS.
Ruth is Director of Jazz Studies at Cairn University, Langhorne, Pennsylvania and an Adjunct and Artist in Residence at Temple University. Ruth has been a presence and worker in areas of the arts and social justice throughout her career, and she wholeheartedly believes that it is the duty of the artist to be the truth-teller of society and to speak against injustice.
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support comes from the Presser Foundation, the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia, and Comcast Corporation.
