Natalie Joachim: Solitude + S P A C E
Saturday October 21st, 2023 7-10pm (Night 1)
Doors 7:00pm, Show 8:00pm
$20 Early Bird, $25 General Admission, $30 Door
Solitude + S P A C E is an evening-length musical performance that examines the psychological implications of loneliness and connectivity in an increasingly isolating yet hyperconnected world. Conceived and written by GRAMMY-nominated performer and composer Nathalie Joachim, the work for voice, flute, violin, electronics and sampled field recordings (taken from Music Box Village in November 2021) integrates interactive lighting as a key component in creating a truly immersive experience that grapples with the conflicting notions of fear, othering, comfort, and peace that come forth when negotiating a singularly collective existence. Key collaborators include GRAMMY award winning violinist Yvonne Lam and internationally acclaimed lighting designer Nicholas Houfek. Solitude + S P A C E was commissioned in part by Yale University’s Schwarzman Center, and will be completed through a commission by New Orleans Airlift.
Developmental work for this project began in fall 2021 when Joachim first visited New Orleans Airlift’s Music Box Village for a long form residency as part of the Resonant Residency Program. Still in the midst of navigating the global pandemic, the Music Box Village, known best as a throbbing community gathering and performance space, was not yet open to the public. The houses, which double as musical instruments and sonic objects, were deafeningly silent, and the village presented an almost ghostly feeling of emptiness. When offered ademonstration of each home’s true sonic capability, Joachim was overwhelmed by how utterly cacophonous they sounded compared to the relative stillness of their remote surroundings. After more than a year of extreme isolation where silence prevailed, she wasn’t prepared for their vibrancy, and was instead drawn to the artifacts of their prior existence: the creaks of their floorboards; the tinkling sounds revealed as the wind passed through them; the soft clang of their un-amplified appendages. She spent several days capturing audio recordings of these sounds and cataloguing them in what ultimately became the sound library from which the Solitude portion of the piece was born. This piece pairs Joachim’s voice with solo violin over a
reimagined recorded landscape created by manipulating and collaging samples from her Music Box Village sound archive. Concurrently, through a residency at Yale University, Joachim was tasked with creating work in response to a newly conceived performance space on the school’s campus. Similarly, this venue, which almost always pulsed with student activity, was completely empty but for the composer’s presence. This left Joachim to contemplate her own relationship to a knowingly shared space experienced in the loneliest way. The resulting work fuses imaginative and distinct electronic landscapes with an acoustic duo of flute and violin, sometimes longingly responding to one another and at other times judiciously in synch. S P A C E fluctuates
between incredibly soothing and downright disruptive textures merging in a playful yet seductive dance.
Solitude + S P A C E builds upon this momentum in an culminating experience that will premiere at the Music Box Village in Fall 2023. The piece as a whole is a direct reflection of the composer’s personal lifetime struggle with both anxiety and depression, particularly connected to social environments and intentional seclusion, and how those afflictions have manifested in a highly performative life and career. However, it also offers a broader social commentary on being inundated by the feigned connectedness offered by technology and the dangerous effects of communities that are in fact becoming increasingly insular and segregated.
Solitude + S P A C E takes the audience on an immersive journey through humanity’s relationship with space. Joachim and Lam explore the juxtaposition of personal and communal spaces and what it means to be both insular and expansive, while Houfek’s lighting reacts in real time so that light and sound become co-protagonists in the experience.