Bringing local and global issues to the Maine stage, Aroostook County composer Erica Quin-Easter will celebrate the premiere of (F)light, a new work exploring the issues, conflicts, and contemporary experience of the borderlands. Women in Harmony, a 60-member chorus of women’s voices in Portland, Maine, will feature the work in its spring concert Moving On: Immigration in Song on Saturday, May 14 at 7 p.m. and Sunday, May 15 at 4:00 p.m. at the Woodfords Congregational Church in Portland. According to Quin-Easter, (F)light is the centerpiece of a full concert built around the theme of migration, with songs ranging from Acadian arrangements to a special appearance by the Pihcintu Children’s Chorus of Maine.
The nine a cappella songs for women’s voices that comprise (F)light reflect the landscape, people, and history of Maine and Arizona, two diametrically opposite regions with diverse habitats and cultures. The (F)light project, originally conceived by Quin-Easter, is a collaboration with poets Wendy Burk and Eric Magrane of Tucson, Arizona, who wrote the series of poems that serve as the libretto for the song cycle. Developed during two weeklong residencies in Maine and Arizona, (F)light is a hybrid, innovative work transforming the compositional process – more commonly experienced as an individual endeavor – into a creative collaboration reflecting the culture and geography of contemporary American borderlands.
The (F)light project merges poetry and musical composition to engage with themes of migration, culture, identity, and environment in the Canadian border regions of northern Maine and the Mexican border regions of southern Arizona, according to Quin-Easter. Environmental and cultural conflicts and changes are at the cutting edge of the nation’s political and social concerns, and (F)light brings these issues to the forefront of Maine audiences in a way that engages and challenges our notions of self and other, stability and mobility.
Quin-Easter, a resident of Caribou, noted that “borders are a place of great connection and fluidity, as well as a site of heightened conflict and contestation. Both the rhetoric and the reality of the border keep us on our toes defining just who is to be counted among ‘us.’”
Funding for the creation of the (F)light project was provided by the Innovative Production Grant program at the Maine Arts Commission, an independent state agency supported by the National Endowment for the Arts. Support for its premiere performance by Women in Harmony was provided by an Alfred Nash Patterson grant from Choral Arts New England and an Artists in Maine Communities grant from the Maine Arts Commission. For more information on the performances or to purchase tickets, visit www.wihmaine.org.
