chh@heraldsun.com; 419-6654
CHAPEL HILL -- There are many aspects of "Ain't I a Woman!" that fascinate Janet Buehler, but what most excites her about the winter concert by Women's Voices Chorus is "this glorious, big cloud bank of sound."
"It's this big mass of tonalities," Buehler said of the "really rousing" song written by Filipino composer Sidney Marquez Boquiren for the Women's Voices Chorus.
"I composed 'Devi' at the request of Allan Friedman," said Boquiren, who graduated from Duke University in 1999 with a doctorate in composition. "It is written for and dedicated to each of the members of Women's Voices Chorus." Friedman is artistic director of Women's Voices Chorus, which will be presenting the play at 3 p.m. Sunday at University United Methodist Church.
"Ain't I a Woman!" is "a very cool concert with a lot of new works by local composers, some of whom live in Chapel Hill," said Buehler, who is a member of the chorus.
The concert explores "the theme of women in various roles, from Hindu goddess to mother to factory worker to Abraham Lincoln's mother, to Old Testament heroines," Buehler said.
"There's one song that's sung in Yiddish ... in the voice of garment workers in New York who are toiling away at this thankless job, and they're singing to their love and dreaming of a better place that they could be meeting than this sweat shop," she said.
Despite the context of the performance, it's appeal is not limited by gender.
"They've all got mothers, some have sisters or wives," Buehler said of why men would find the performance of interest. "I'm just hoping this is an excuse to bring a significant woman in their life" to see the show.
"Apart from the content, the music is really exciting," she said, "from gospel to classic to heartfelt folk."
Boquiren said the text for 'Devi' "is a litany of the aspects of 15 Hindu goddesses (selected from among thousands), each of whom in some way is a distinct manifestation of Devi (which is Sanskrit for "goddess"), the supreme feminine divinity in Hindu practice. After an introductory call of praise, these aspects (such as daughter, sister, wife; malevolent, benevolent, terrible; beautiful and nurturing, as well as wisdom and death; etc.) are intoned above the constant drone and repetition of the text 'I am.'"
The concert's title comes from the famous words of Sojourner Truth at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in 1851. The choir will also premiere three new works by Duke University graduate composers Boquiren, Paul Leary and Thom Limbert.
"I picked these three because I thought they would write interesting new music for women's choir," Friedman said. "Two of the composers, Leary and Boquiren, have extensive experience writing for chorus, but not for women's chorus. This will be Limbert's first piece for a choir. One of the goals of the chorus is to encourage composers to think about writing for women's voices, and these three fit the bill."
"I jumped at the chance to compose for women's choir since I don't get to write vocal music very often and I have been impressed with the group's breadth of abilities, thick sound, and interesting body of repertoire," Limbert said.
