Voices of Connection: 01/26 Jennifer Jolley: A Prisoner of Conscience

JENNIFER JOLLEY Prisoner of Conscience: VII. Death to Prison, Freedom to Protest

Quince Ensemble Motherland ℗ 2018 New Focus Recordings

TODAY WE HEAR MORE FROM GUEST CURATOR AND ASTRONAUTICA COMPOSER JENNIFER JOLLEY.

Prisoner of Conscience is a work that continues to grow in its importance to me. As a composition, it marks a real development in my choral writing. I had never attempted to meld together such a diverse range of styles (Motets, Reggae, 1960s Rock & Roll, among others), and the experience has encouraged me to be more ambitious and experimental in all my subsequent work. I would be remiss, however, if I didn’t also credit the compelling narrative arc created by my librettist Kendall A that gives the work such a powerful structure and allows this diversity to work. The other way that the piece has grown in importance makes me feel more ambivalent.

When Kendall and I wrote about the trial of a Russian feminist collective by the autocratic government of Vladimir Putin, we thought about the events as emblematic of the artist’s historical refusal to succumb to state authority. After all, the events were already three-years past when we wrote it, and we couldn’t imagine how prophetic it would become. Unfortunately, the democratic back-sliding at home and abroad in the last half-decade has changed how Prisoner of Conscience is received. – Jennifer Jolley

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