Event

The Clearing & the Forest

As part of its 25-Anniversary season, SOLI Chamber Ensemble is proud to present the world premiere of The Clearing and the Forest, a new piece by critically-acclaimed composer Scott Ordway on the subject of emigration, refugees and international borders.

Ordway, whose multidisciplinary work has been called exquisite by The New York Times and a marvel by The Philadelphia Inquirer, will join forces with Boston-based scenic designer Erica Eliot to create a work that blends chamber music, experimental theater, and visual art installation. The 90-minute piece explores themes of displacement, immigration, refuge, and home through the distinctive medium of staged chamber music.

In the performance, which takes place in the remarkably versatile Leeper Auditorium of the McNay Art Museum, SOLIs four core members become actors with specifically articulated characteristics, objectives, and interrelationships. At times they play their instruments in front of, behind, above, and hidden from the audience. At other times, they move through the space as silent actors. Eliots lush botanical set design, crafted predominantly from flowers, trees, and other organic material, creates a sensory, sculptural environment for this story of human resilience and togetherness to unfold.

ACT 1
we must leave this place forever
Prologue
1a. Summons (prelude)
1b. Coins (toccata)
1c. Paper (chorale)
1d. Cloth and kindness (recitative)
1e. Warmth (coda)

ACT 2
we must run like wolves to the end
2a. Cadenza (1)
2b. Dialogue
2c. Cadenza (2)
2d. Processional (1)
2e. Toccata
2f. Processional (2)
2g. Monologue (2)
Intermezzo
a prayer of thanksgiving

ACT 3
the things we lost we will never reclaim