The Wallis And Tonality Present AT WAR WITH OURSELVES - 400 YEARS OF YOU With Kronos Quartet & Tonality

The acclaimed Kronos Quartet joins Grammy Award-winning choral ensemble Tonality to perform At War With Ourselves – 400 Years of You, a rhapsodic modern day song cycle spun from the skin of history for string quartet, narrator, and chorus. 

This powerful new work performed at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts and presented by The Wallis & Tonality on Saturday, February 15 at 7:30pm, explores race relations, social justice, and civil rights in 21st century America.

At War with Ourselves features a text by National Book Award-winning poet Nikky Finney inspired by her 2013 poem “The Battle of and for the Black Face Boy”; the music is composed by Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Abels, composer for the Jordan Peele films Us, Get Out and Nope.  

Finney said of her 2013 poem that would eventually inspire the text for At War With Ourselves. It was a “radical libretto made of Civil War history, Black history, and modern American headlines. Black Face Boy examines how “the question of who gets to move like a free person and who gets to move in chains remains ensconced in our everyday American lives one hundred and fifty years later.”

In addition, At War With Ourselves marks the Los Angeles debut of the two new members of Kronos Quartet Gabriela Díaz and Ayane Kozasa.

This performance inaugurates a new partnership between Tonality and The Wallis; this performance is conducted by Dr. Alexander Lloyd Blake, Executive/Founding Artistic Director of Tonality, and will be his first time conducting At War With Ourselves.  

Tonality returns to The Wallis on May 24 to perform Put Your Guns Down, focusing on an active sense of peace as we come together to find solutions toward the epidemic of gun violence.  The program features the world premiere of Alexander Lloyd Blake's Running From, Running To: A Musical Reflection on Ahmaud Arbery. The Wallis is a co-commissioner of the composition.

Alexander Lloyd Blake said, “It is a true honor to conduct At War With Ourselves a work so meaningful to Tonality, to start our association with The Wallis and to collaborate with Kronos Quartet, Michael Abels, and Nikky Finney.  This piece is incredibly important—it sparks essential conversations that remain relevant today.”

Blake continued, “Tonality has embarked on many concerts and compositions that help us confront an honest and accurate history of America and how we've treated one another.
To me, this allows us to move forward with both pride and patriotism, acknowledging where we are and where we need to go. At War With Ourselves continues the conversation about how we truly see one another. It not only reflects the struggles of Black people but also celebrates their beauty and contributions to this country. Nikky's words and Michael's diverse composition come together beautifully to reflect the totality of this experience."

Robert van Leer, Artistic Director and CEO of The Wallis, said, “It is important to The Wallis to begin our new partnership with Tonality and Kronos Quartet, one of the most important and pivotal musical ensembles of our time, with a work of this magnitude and power that Kronos commissioned from Michael Abels to text by Nikki Finney.”

In his program note, D. Scot Miller writes, “The seeds of the project were planted a decade ago. ‘One night in 2011, I was watching the National Book Awards, and they were honoring the winner of the poetry award, Nikky Finney,” recalled Kronos' Artistic Director, David Harrington. “I was all by myself watching her acceptance speech, just weeping.'  In her opening remarks, Finney pays homage to ‘the ones who longed to read and write, but were forbidden, who lost hands and feet, were killed, by laws written by men who believed they owned other men. [...] If my name is ever called out,' she says, ‘I promised my girl-poet self, so too would I call out theirs.'”

Indeed, throughout the development of the project and beyond, the number of Black lives stolen by American law enforcement has continued to surge. Harrington remembers a particular meeting in Maryland that happened to coincide with yet another police killing of a young Black man: “Just as we were right in the middle of thinking about how this project would take shape as an experience, it seemed like, ‘Here our society goes again and again...'” An urgent matter continually becoming more urgent still.”

Michael Abels, whose compositions address social issues and give voice to the Black experience, brings a deep sense of personal and cultural awareness to this work. “The imagery and references in Nikki's poetry are so rich, I was able to create a complete song cycle from a poem that is essentially a single page,” said Abels. “To find the rhythm and meaning of Nikky's language, I meditated on each stanza individually. I researched her references to ‘traffic lights' and ‘ironing boards' to educate myself on the history. The piece incorporates stylistic elements of many of the most iconic American music genres, from folk to Dixieland, to Jimi Hendrix, and the sounds of The Great American Songbook.”

Tonality first performed At War With Ourselves in 2022 in Phoenix, AZ, and later in 2023 in Iowa and Virginia. The performance at The Wallis will be the first time Tonality founder Alexander Blake will conduct the work. 

At War With Ourselves – 400 Years of You premiered at Texas Performing Arts at the University of Texas at Austin in November 2021.  It was commissioned by the Kronos Performing Arts Association, funded in part by a Hewlett Foundation 50 Arts Commission and the MAP Fund, in partnership with ASU Gammage at Arizona State University, Hancher Auditorium–The University of Iowa, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts/University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, SFJAZZ, Texas Performing Arts at the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of South Carolina.

Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts is located at 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd, Beverly Hills. To purchase single tickets, subscriptions and for more information, please call 310-746-4000 (Monday – Friday, 10 am to 6 pm) or visit TheWallis.org.

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