The first Refugia Festival was held April 20 and 21 in Nichols Arboretum. The festival included a number of musical performances, a nature sound scavenger hunt and presentations on local flora and fauna. The second day of the festival featured a performance of more than a dozen performers all participating in a similar process of improvising while reacting to the sounds of nature. The two-day event was organized by School of Music, Theatre & Dance doctoral candidate Alexis Lamb.
The headlining event of the weekend was the performance of Lamb’s doctoral thesis titled “Resonant Gratitude.” The piece fused traditional orchestral instruments, such as violins and oboes, with sounds from nature. Lamb’s process of creating the piece began after she interviewed two musicians, Kathleen Moore and Gordon Hempton. Through them, Lamb was invited to travel to Ecuador and Alaska to make field recordings to record herself playing in response to sounds from the different environments.
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Lamb said the landscapes and sound of those locations inspired her playing, and those same elements guided the musicians performing “Resonant Gratitude.”
“The music is based off of naturally inspired gestures and leaving it open to the performers to contribute however they want to,” Lamb said.
Throughout the piece, spoken word passages were delivered to performers to guide their improvisation. One passage instructed performers to imagine roots growing into the ground, while the other asked the performers to think of light shimmering across a body of water. Lamb told The Daily that she is working with a fellowship to perform the piece in more locations across the world.
“My intention is to play the piece in multiple different ecosystems to see what happens when you perform the music in different spaces,” Lamb said. “If we open things up so that the performers have room to improvise, how will the music change based on what animals are there?”
School of Music, Theatre & Dance student Emily Graham was one of the volunteers at the Refugia Festival. She told The Daily she met Lamb through classes in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance.
“We did a workshop of ‘Resonant Gratitude’ a couple weeks back, and I was just so enthralled by the experience,” Graham said. “I immediately decided to become involved.”
Graham said in addition to Lamb’s performance, another one of her favorites was Darian Donovan Thomas, Brooklyn-based composer and multi-instrumentalist. Thomas performed an improvised electroacoustic piece featuring violin and vocals, all heavily manipulated through effects pedals. Through these elements, Thomas was able to emulate the sounds of a full string quartet, birds chirping and modular synthesizers.
In an interview with The Daily, Thomas said both his classical background and work in the music field throughout the years influence his improvisational process.
“One of my bands got me super into improvising, one of them got me super into pedals,” Thomas said. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is a world where none of my music teachers have touched.’ But I can also still apply the things that they taught me that were good.”
Thomas and Lamb connected through their work with ChamberQUEER, a Brooklyn-based group working to highlight Queer artists in the classical music space. Thomas also performed as a member of Lamb’s ensemble during the presentation of her thesis.
Lamb said she hopes “Resonant Gratitude” contributes to the broader canon of musical expression from people of all skill levels.
“I really love the idea of coming together,” Lamb said. “You are as you are. Everyone is playing something to contribute to the larger hole and it doesn’t really matter what your background is, because we’re all just making music together.”
Daily News Reporter Liam McCanny can be reached at mccl@umich.edu.