Welcome to Hey it’s me, your mom, hope you’re doing well

This is a piece about interacting with someone you love deeply but don’t communicate with as frequently as you would like. How might you do this while also balancing the care it takes to listen to fellow performers in a free-improvisational setting. I have asked the performers to choose a voicemail from their person and, while listening to it in real-time, engage with it physically, emotionally and musically. We spent time ahead of the performance inhabiting these voicemails and creating a sort of musical and emotional toolbox to pull from when it is performed live. We were deeply thinking about the different layers of care needed to embody memory in a live setting with others taking on this project at the same time.

As you experience this piece I encourage you to think about some words Sara Ahmed wrote in "The Promise of Happiness:"
“There is nothing more vulnerable than caring for someone; it means not only giving your energy to that which is not you but also caring for that which is beyond or outside your control. Caring is anxious—to be full of care, to be careful, is to take care of things by becoming anxious about their future, where the future is embodied in the fragility of an object whose persistence matters. To care is not about letting an object go but holding on to an object by letting oneself go, giving oneself over to something that is not one’s own.”

Performed in conjuction with Ensemble Evolution 2023 Closing Night
Stiefel Hall at Mannes School of Music
New York, NY

June 29, 2023

Performed by:

Michele Cheng, performer
Isuel Kim, voice/piano
Mac Waters, viola