Seth Parker Woods to Release DIFFICULT GRACE in April - Single & Video Out Now

Grammy Award-nominated cellist Seth Parker Woods will release the world premiere recording of his multimedia concert tour-de-force, Difficult Grace - featuring works by Fredrick Gifford, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, Monty Adkins, Nathalie Joachim, Alvin Singleton, and Ted Hearne - on Cedille Records.

Difficult Grace is a semi-autobiographical exploration of Woods' identity; past/present histories and personal growth that draws inspiration from the Great Migration; excerpts from the historic newspaper, The Chicago Defender; immigration; and the poetry of Kemi Alabi and Dudley Randall.

Out today, the album's first single, Ted Hearne's A Wedding, or What We Unlearned from Descartes, is accompanied by a music video featuring footage from the world premiere of Difficult Grace at 92NY in November 2022. An evocative, theatrical, and genre-bending collaboration with choreographer and dancer Roderick George, Difficult Grace features Woods in the triple role of cellist, narrator/guide, and movement artist, performing music written for and with him with visual artwork by Jacob Lawrence, Barbara Earl Thomas, Zoë McLean, and Freida Abtan; a gripping performance by George; sound design by Christopher Botta; and lighting and visual design by Thomas Dunn. The album's cover art is Barbara Earl Thomas's Joyful Noise (2022), which features Woods likeness and premiered as part of her latest solo exhibition in New York City.

Woods performed the show at UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance in Los Angeles in December 2022 and will bring it to Chicago's Harris Theater on Thursday, April 20, 2023 at 6:00pm CT and the San Diego Symphony's Currents Series on Tuesday, November 28, 2023 at 7:30pm PT. This release marks Woods' debut recording on Cedille. He was nominated for a 2023 Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance as a soloist in Wild Up's recording, Julius Eastman Vol. 2: Joy Boy on New Amsterdam Records (2022).

In his booklet-opening notes, writer John Fallas states, "In a 1934 essay, the writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston suggests that there is something common - what she calls a 'will to adorn' - uniting a wide variety of African American cultural articulations, from styles of speech to clothing and home decoration. Understood thus, adornment may be both an expression of self and community and a creative response to trouble - especially when that trouble arises in the context of a shared history of pain and injustice. This aesthetic of adornment - of constant, joyous multiplication - is embodied in the cellist Seth Parker Woods' ambitious, already acclaimed project Difficult Grace, with its relentless, exploratory acts of translation across different artistic media and dizzying expansion of what we might expect a solo instrumentalist to do, on stage or in the studio."

The album opens with its title work, the world premiere recording of Fredrick Gifford's Difficult Grace, followed by "Calvary Ostinato" from Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson's Lamentations: Black/Folk Song Suite. Next, Woods performs the world premiere recordings of Monty Adkins' Winter Tendrils and Nathalie Joachim's The Race: 1915, succeeded by Alvin Singleton's Argoru II. Then, Joachim joins Woods as vocalist in a performance of her own Dam Mwen Yo. The album closes with the world premiere of Ted Hearne's multi-movement Freefucked, featuring Hearne on vocals and electronics on the final track, "After We Ruin."

Difficult Grace was co-commissioned for Seth Parker Woods by the 92nd Street Y, with the generous support of Elizabeth and Justus Schlichting; the Harris Theater; UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance; and The Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth. The world premiere of Difficult Grace without dance was presented by the Seattle Symphony at Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center at Benaroya Hall in February 2020.

About Seth Parker Woods

Hailed by The Guardian as "a cellist of power and grace" who possesses "mature artistry and willingness to go to the brink," cellist Seth Parker Woods has established his reputation as a versatile artist and innovator across multiple genres. His projects delve deep into our cultural fabric, reimagining traditional works and commissioning new ones to propel classical music into the future. Woods is a recipient of the 2022 Chamber Music America Michael Jaffee Visionary Award.

In the 2022-2023 season, Woods premieres a new version of his evening-length, multimedia tour de force Difficult Grace at 92Y, UCLA, and Chicago's Harris Theater; curates and performs a program honoring the centennial of composer George Walker at The Phillips Collection in Washington D.C.; premieres Freida Abtan's My Heart is a River, commissioned by the Seattle Symphony; and performs a world premiere by Anna Thorvaldsdottir at Carnegie Hall as part of Claire Chase's Density Series. The Great Northern Festival in Minneapolis will present Woods in his critically acclaimed performance installation, Iced Bodies, in which Woods, in a wetsuit, plays an obsidian ice cello.

Recital appearances this season include concerts with pianist Andrew Rosenblum at Dumbarton Oaks in D.C., Boston's Isabella Gardner Museum, and The Wallis Annenberg Center in Beverly Hills, and a return to his former home Brussels for a solo recital at Das Haus. He also tours to Washington Performing Arts, Krannert Center, Stanford Live, California Center for the Arts, Count Basie Center for the Arts, Auburn University, and Emory University with the Chad Lawson Trio. In addition, Woods will hold residencies at Montclair State University and Oberlin Conservatory. The season will also see the release of a new solo album on Cedille Records and the soundtrack of the PBS documentary The U.S. and the Holocaust - a film by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein - to which Woods contributed.

In addition to solo performances, he has appeared with the ICTUS Ensemble (Brussels, BE), Ensemble L'Arsenale (IT), zone Experimental (CH), Basel Sinfonietta (CH), Ensemble LPR, Orchestra of St. Luke's, the Atlanta and Seattle Symphonies, and in chamber music with violinist Hilary Hahn and pianist Andreas Haefliger. A fierce advocate for contemporary arts, Woods has collaborated and worked with a wide range of artists ranging from the likes of Louis Andriessen, Elliott Carter, Heinz Holliger, G. F. Haas, Helmut Lachenmann, Klaus Lang, and Peter Eötvos to Peter Gabriel, Sting, Lou Reed, Dame Shirley Bassey, and Rachael Yamagata to such visual artists as Ron Athey, Vanessa Beecroft, Jack Early, Adam Pendleton, and Aldo Tambellini. In the 2021-2022 season, he premiered concertos by Rebecca Saunders and Tyshawn Sorey.

His debut solo album, asinglewordisnotenough (Confront Recordings-London), has garnered great acclaim since its release in November 2016 and has been profiled in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, The Guardian, 5against4, I Care If You Listen, Musical America, Seattle Times, and Strings Magazine, amongst others.

Woods recently joined the faculty of the Thornton School of Music at The University of Southern California as Assistant Professor of Practice - Cello and Chamber Music. He previously served on the faculties of the University at Buffalo, University of Chicago, Dartmouth College, and the Chicago Academy of the Arts and as Artist in Residence at the University of Miami's Frost School of Music and Northwestern University - Center for New Music. Woods holds degrees from Brooklyn College, Musik Akademie der Stadt Basel, and a PhD from the University of Huddersfield. In the 2020-21 season, he was an Artist in Residence with the Kaufman Music Center, and from 2018-2020 he served as Artist in Residence with Seattle Symphony and Creative Consultant for the interactive concert hall, Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center.

Seth Parker Woods is a Pirastro Artist and endorses Pirastro Perpetual Strings worldwide. Learn more at www.sethparkerwoods.com.

Difficult Grace Tracklist

1. Fredrick Gifford (b. 1972) - Difficult Grace* [6:24]

2. Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson (1932-2004) - "Calvary Ostinato" from Lamentations: Black/Folk Song Suite [3:25]

3. Monty Adkins (b. 1972) - Winter Tendrils* [10:23]

4. Nathalie Joachim (b. 1983) - The Race: 1915* [7:07]

5. Alvin Singleton (b. 1940) - Argoru II [12:15]

6. Nathalie Joachim - Dam Mwen Yo [5:29]

Nathalie Joachim, voice

Ted Hearne (b. 1982) - Freefucked*

7. free fucked (1) [1:45]

8. A Wedding, or What We Unlearned from Descartes [5:15]

9. free fucked (2) [2:59]

10. The Lion Tamer's Daughter vs. the Ledge [4:16]

11. After We Ruin [2:18]

Ted Hearne, voice and electronics

TT: 61:47

*World Premiere Recording

CDR 90000 219

Producers

Elaine Martone

Seth Parker Woods

Ted Hearne (Freefucked)

Engineer Bill Maylone

Assistant Engineer Jonathan Lackey

Mix Engineer [A Wedding, or What We Unlearned from Descartes] Christopher Botta

Recorded

September 12-17, 2022 at Chicago Recording Company, Chicago, IL

October 18-19, November 14, 2022 at Unsettlement Studios in Los Angeles, CA (Freefucked vocals)

Artwork Barbara Earl Thomas, Joyful Noise (2022)

Graphic Design Bark Design

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