Choose artist...
Home   >   Projects

Projects

Artist: Wilhelmina Smith
Projects per page:
Wilhelmina Smith:

sweetgrass - music by Dawn Avery

American cellist Wilhelmina Smith discovered Dawn Avery’s composition Gratitude during the pandemic while searching online for music by Indigenous composers that could accompany a video project connecting music to nature. After that project, Avery— who draws from her devotion to sacred world traditions, including those from her own Kaniènkéha (Mohawk) heritage, sent other works to Smith, including Decolonization, a piece with a narrative thread that starts with Geronimo’s song and moves through several traditional Indigenous dances and songs, including a Hendrix-y version of the American national anthem. Avery has described the work as exploring “what it means to be truly ‘American.’”

Also a skilled cellist, Avery writes technically virtuosic music for her instrument, but never at the expense of its message, which inspired Smith to commission a new work from her that became Sweetgrass (Ohònte Wenserá:kon), the album’s title track. Smith finds the work to be not only evocative of nature but also a metaphor for innocence, vulnerability, and beauty. Smith and Avery chose the remaining works on the album together. Some had originally been for two instruments; these were either re-scored by the composer or the two lines recorded separately. The first and last pieces, We Enter Together and Orèn:ta, are musically connected: the first represents the partnership between cellist and composer, and the last—along with the other vocal tracks on the album—features Avery’s own voice, as she describes, “singing deep from the heart.” Smith comments: “Her voice is, in my opinion, the soul of this album.” 
 

Wilhelmina Smith:

Works For Solo Cello, Per Norgard, Poul Ruders

Cellist Wilhelmina Smith's second album on Ondine continues exploring contemporary Nordic repertoire for solo cello. In her new album Smith has focus on Danish contemporary composers, Per Ngård (b. 1932) and Poul Ruders (b. 1949).

Both Nørgård and Ruders are known for their large-scale orchestral works. Nørgård, in particular, is known for his eight symphonies and has been hailed by many as one of the greatest living symphonists. It is therefore intriguing to look closer to his two very early lyrical solo cello sonatas, early masterpieces written just before completing his 1st Symphony. In 1980, the composer revised his second sonata by adding an extensive second movement, almost an entirely new sonata, to the existing work. Nørgård's 3rd sonata "What – Is the Word!" from 1999 is a short "Sonata breve" that takes its title from a quote by Irish playwriter Samuel Beckett.     

Wilhelmina Smith:

Works for Solo Cello by Salonen and Saariaho

On a more intimate scale, Ondine/Naxos offers American cellist Wilhelmina Smith in a stimulating array of solo pieces by two of Finland's greatest modern musical luminaries, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Kaija Saariaho. Three works by Salonen are followed by four of Saariaho's, linked by a chiacona by seventeenth-century Modenese composer Giuseppe Colombi that inspired the last of Salonen's pieces (Sarabande per un coyote) and the first of Saariaho's (Dreaming Chaconne). (Both are components of the Mystery Variations, commissioned from thirty-one leading composers by Finnish cellist Anssi Karttunen in 2010.)