Confinement (2021)

from the Falling Between the Worlds Song Cycle, an ongoing collaborative project

Duration

2 minutes

Instrumentation

Mezzo-Soprano and Piano

First Performance

May 7, 2021 at Baldwin Hall in Durham, NC
Composer: Dayton Kinney
Poet: Ann Witherspoon
Mezzo-Soprano: Sandra Cotton
Piano: David Heid

Program Notes

This beginning of a song cycle, Falling Between the Worlds, is based on Ann Witherspoon’s collection poems of the same name. Witherspoon wrote these poems based on her experiences as a woman living in a senior community during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through her poems, she reveals her inner monologues from the pandemic, ranging from isolation and fear to hope and faith through the raw perspective of an elderly woman trapped within a high-risk community. This ongoing collaborative project hopes to complete setting Witherspoon’s 45 poems from the collection.

This movement, “Confinement” explores the panic and fatigue of technology replacing humanity. Closed-in by technological advancements and an isolating pandemic, Witherspoon questions the online world replacing the physicality of human spaces. Witherspoon asks, “When did the world start to dry out to become devoid of juice, of blood…?” Together, the singer and pianist seek what “made life beautiful,” through musical motives and rhythms ,while highlighting the fear of losing a sense of humanity. This piece was recorded in Baldwin Hall at Duke University, Durham, NC on March 24, 2021 for the [dnme] digital concert (directed by Verena Mösenbichler-Bryant) that aired on May 7, 2021. Sandra Cotton (Mezzo-Soprano) and David Heid (Piano) perform.