(back to list) October 2009

Welcome to the November issue of Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival newsletter. I am pleased to feature composer Pauline Oliveros, recognized as one of the most innovative composers of her generation and known for her work with music and healing. Pauline has just been honored with the William Schuman Award from Columbia University. She will be appearing on the April 19th concert performing “Sounding for Well Being.” Also in this issue is a portrait of the German singer Tizrah Hasse, photographed by fellow cancer survivor Eva Horstick-Schmitt and interviewed by Horstick-Schmitt and Welltone’s own senior staff member Brooke Bryant.

Tirzah Hasse is a singer and actress from Hamburg, Germany. Tirzah has starred in classical plays such as Schiller’s Mary Stuart and operettas, including Nico Dostal’s Clivia. She has appeared in the TV series Traumschiff and Der gross Bellheim. Tirzah specializes in jazz and songs in the style of Marlene Dietrich, the performance of which requires strong acting technique. She trained in the Musical-Schule Hamburg and with professor Ida Ehre at the Hamburger Kammerspiele.

Eva Horstick-Schmitt is a photographer whose art has been featured in installations and exhibitions all over the world. She specializes in multi-disciplinary work reflecting her discussion with life in a society which is driven by politics, fashion, war, entertainment, consumerism, generations and human trafficking. Eva’s images depict scenarios that are both narrative and starkly visual, revealing a poetic world full of hidden meaning.

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I have faith in listening. Listening brings me to faith – faith that I can believe my ears as much as I can believe my eyes. Sound impacts my body and resonates within. Sounds keep returning to me as I listen. I think how limited our vocabulary is when it comes to discussing inner or mental sound and sounding. We have the word imagination. Imagination. refers to the visual sense even though it is used to refer to all senses – imaginative hearing, imaginative touching, imaginative tasting even imaginative smelling.

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