Beginning January 11, 2021, at 5 pm, the New York-based global art song platform Sparks & Wiry Cries will present their flagship songSLAM Festival with twelve days of song. The annual NYC songSLAM will feature fourteen emerging composer/performer teams presenting new art song compositions, professionally recorded in November at the Blue Building in New York City.
In the poetry slam tradition, the top three teams to generate the most funds will win cash prizes, as voted on by the audience via text-to-vote for as little as $1 per vote. The composer for the team earning the most unique votes will receive mentorship from "one of New York's favorite song composers" (The New Yorker), Tom Cipullo.
A panel of judges including mezzo-soprano
Stephanie Blythe, bass-baritone
Eric Owens, composer Reinaldo Moya and Sparks' Co-Artistic Directors Erika Switzer and Martha Guth will choose their favorite composer from the pool of submissions and commission an additional 15-minute work for voice and piano to be premiered during the 2022 songSLAM festival.
Among the artists competing in this month's NYC songSLAM are mezzo-soprano Anna Tonna and pianist/composer Alexa Babakhanian, performing "Sin título" with text by Spanish Nobel Prize-winner Juan Ramón Jiménez. The two performers first met in 2017 when the initiative Women in Music/Mujeres en Música, co-led by Anna, was awarded two Seed Fund Grants by New York Women Composers to do a concert at the Bruno Walter Auditorium at Lincoln Center and the International Institute in Madrid. The two say "it was a breath of fresh air to make music again (with windows open and face masks)!" "Temporary Insanity" composed by Jon Irabagon is performed by the team of Jennifer Beattie, mezzo-soprano and poet and
Adam Marks, pianist, co-founders of the Artists at Albatross Reach artist colony and laboratory for new work, and "Do You See the Flag," composed by Curtis J. Stewart for pianist Nathaniel LaNasa and baritone Gregory Feldmann, "reconsiders the later verses of the 'Star Spangled Banner' so that we can think more clearly about our present, and dream more boldly for our future."
"Sweet-toned soprano" (Opera News) April Martin teamed up with composer/pianist/poet Evan Fein to present "Greenport, Long Island: A Socially-Distanced Diva," addressing the fate of a performer stuck stateside during the COVID-19 pandemic, and baritone CodyRay Caho and pianist/composer
Michael Lewis - co-founders of the organization Aural Compass Projects dedicated to performing and promoting music by marginalized composers - perform their "Isolation," written during their time together throughout the pandemic lockdown.
Learn more in the coming days about the artists on Sparks & Wiry Cries' Socials: FACEBOOK & INSTAGRAM. A full listing of NYC songSLAM performers and works is below.
On January 22 at 9 PM EST, as the twelve day songSLAM concludes, Sparks & Wiry Cries will share the second program of the festival, two world-premiere performances of compositions that focus on stories representing the unique human experience in 2020, recorded for a virtual audience under the guidance of songSLAM Festival Executive Producer Matthew Principe. The premieres will be released for free to audiences worldwide and accompanying PDFs of each score will also be available for purchase.
In "Ciudad Perdita," composer Reinaldo Moya sets the poetry of Adalber Salas Hernández to conjure a profound sense of place for Caracas, the city of Moya's youth, before his migration and immigration to the United States. The work is performed by soprano María Brea and pianist Howard Watkins. Detroit Slam Poet Jessica Care Moore explores the relationship between life, faith, race, and death in the time of COVID in her "Ramadan 20 VS. COVID 19," set to music by Andrew Staniland and performed by soprano LaToya Lain and pianist Erika Switzer.
Additionally, Sparks & Wiry Cries will produce a virtual songSLAM in conjunction with Cincinnati Song Initiative on January 9, 2021 and live songSLAM events are in the works for late spring of 2021 in Ljubljana (Slovenia) and London, U.K.
