Gaudeamus nominee Annika Socolofsky: âAll the fun lies in those messy moments between the notesâ
Composer-vocalist Annika Socolofsky is one of the four nominees for the Gaudeamus Award 2021. Two years ago this prize for young composers was won by Kelley Sheehan; last yearâs competition was postponed due to corona. Socolofskyâs work will be featured during several concerts, but she also composed a new piece for the accordion/clarinet duo Zöllner-Roche especially for the festival. On Sunday 11 September the winner of the Gaudeamus Award 2021 will be announced.
âDonnacha Dennehy, one of my mentors, encouraged me to take part in the Gaudeamus competitionâ, says Annika Socolofsky (1990). âI look forward to making live music again with fellow musicians in a concert context. For this to be my first experience back during the pandemic feels like fasting for a year and a half, and then dining at the most wonderful restaurant. As excited I am to be performing again myself, I really look forward to taking in as many concerts as I can, experiencing the premieres by my fellow nominees.â
Annika Scolofsky (c) Nadine Dyskant-Miller
COMPOSER-PERFORMER
You are both a composer and a performer, how do you see the relationship between the two?
âFor me, there is no way to un-link them. I donât think of myself as a composer and a performer, but as a composer-performer. When Iâm composing, Iâm always thinking about how the music will feel in the body of the performer â what the gestures will feel like, how the energy of the piece will build and dissipate in a manner that feels natural and satisfying to play, what the dialogue will feel like between performers. Iâm constantly moving around, conducting, walking, trying to get the music into my physical being, so I know it will feel natural and rewarding to perform, even if Iâm not performing it myself.â
âWhen Iâm performing, I canât turn off my composer mind. No two performances are alike. Iâm always improvising micro variations and micro inflections that respond to the other performers, or the resonance of the hall in real time. I love being flexible and composing in-the-moment like that. You get to feed off the energy and ideas of the musicians youâre performing with. Itâs an exhilarating and collaborative way of composing that I donât get to experience when writing alone in my studio.â
Annika Socolofsky: âWhen Iâm performing, I canât turn off my composer mind.â
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On your website you describe yourself as an âavant folk vocalist who explores corners and colours of the voice frequently deemed to be âuntrainedâ and not âclassical.â How are we to understand this?
âI feel like I sing in all the ways that classical vocalists are told not to: I belt a lot (kind of a curated, musical shout), I do death-metal style growls, I explore types of vibrato that are not classical, Iâll use a microphone so I can produce sound that wouldnât normally project through a concert hall in an acoustic setting, and I gravitate really strongly to the music that lies between the notes in folk music.â
âThis between-the-note music is a whole world of ornamentation, inflection, gesture, and swells that folk music lives for, but is often excluded from modern day classical vocal practice. I live for those messy moments between the notes. That is where the fun, the joy, the emotional connection lies for me.â
DOLLY PARTON
In this respect you often refer to Dolly Parton. What makes her so special?
âThe link between me and Dolly is those moments between the notes Iâve just mentioned. Dolly Parton is one of the greatest composers of all time, in my opinion. Sheâs written thousands of incredible songs that tell womenâs stories. But not only is she a wonderful composer, she also approaches her vocal technique from a deeply compositional mind-set. If you take a recording of hers and hone in on a single vocal phrase and zoom in ever more closely, you will find the most spectacular density of vocal inflection, ornamentation, and nuance.â
âBut whatâs so amazing to me is not the density or the nuance per se. Itâs how this gorgeous web of inflections serves such a natural and powerful purpose within the larger line and the larger story of the song. Dollyâs moments-between-the-notes hit me straight in the heart. They are these pangs of emotion so small, but so powerful that I find myself breathless. Those moments mean the world to me. â Iâve been working on my Dolly Parton impersonation for years, and would be happy to demonstrate some examples of this live.â*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPDY8MlT_T4
DEFYING SOCIETAL DEFINITIONS OF WOMANHOOD
You will perform âDonât Say a Wordâ in the Gaudeamus festival, which addresses the feminist issue. It strikes me that even in 2021 the theme of female composers still touches upon an open nerve. Whatâs your take on this?
âI couldnât agree with your article more: âwomen composersâ is NOT a theme! Especially as a queer woman, I often find this kind of concert themes problematic. They try to draw some kind of sense of âuniversal womanhoodâ out of what is essentially lazy programming. Personally, I donât feel that there IS any such thing as universal womanhood (aside from the fact that we all experience misogyny of various varieties).â
âAs a queer woman, my experience with my gender and sexuality is extraordinarily different from the one society tries to model for me. Iâm constantly fighting against societyâs definition of womanhood so that I can un-become the things I was taught to be that disagree with who I truly am.â
Annika Socolofsky: âDolly Parton is one of the greatest composers of all time.â
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âAnd thatâs where my piece Donât say a word comes in. Itâs part of a larger song cycle (soon to be released on CD) of feminist rager-lullabies for a new queer era. Lullabies are a centuries-old way of conditioning children with âmoralsâ and societal expectations that are not only sexist, but also deeply homophobic. So I took these old texts from lullabies and nursery rhymes and re-set them to new music, changed the words, altered the meaning so that I could re-tell those lessons in a way that reflects the many facets of my identity.â
âA cool thing about lullabies is that theyâre the only performing space we have as vocalists where thereâs no audience. When youâre singing a lullaby to a young child, theyâre mostly taking in the musical aspects of the vocal line. Itâs not until they are older that they really start processing the words. So mothers singing lullabies to their children are granted this safe performing space, where you can essentially sing the words and thoughts that are not safe to share in society.â
DISTURBING LULLABIES
âThis is why, throughout history and across cultures, you can find so many lullabies with texts that are deeply disturbing. For example, the English language lullaby Rockabye Baby is about a baby falling to the ground from a tree. Or, there is this Sephardic lullaby, Una madre comiĂł asado (âA mother roasts her childâ). The mother sings of an invading army, and her plan to roast her child before the soldiers arrive, to save it from a worse fate.â
âThatâs dark. But in society, women are not allowed to express the darkness of motherhood, theyâre not allowed to show anger, theyâre not allowed to deviate from societyâs definition of womanhood. As musicologist Andrew Petitt puts it, âlullabies are the space to sing the unsung, to say the unsayable. Youâre alone. Nobody is listening.â So you can express feelings that are inacceptable in society.â
âDonât say a word is one such lullaby, which explores the text of Hush little baby, followed by an unexpected turn in the original lyrics. It also explores the word âhushâ in great detail. âHushâ is an interesting word in that it can be aggressive and silencing, but also calming and loving.
Which of your pieces are you proud of most?
âWow, thatâs really hard to answer. I have to say I am most proud of the pieces that manage to capture that Dolly Parton sense of heart-pangs. I compose so that I can hopefully connect with people the way Dolly Parton has connected with me through her music. So Iâm most proud of the pieces that have managed to do that.â
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbjGG7ghvcs
On Friday 10 September at 21.30 CET I will moderate a meet & greet with the four nominees in TivoliVredenburg
*In our talk I took up Annika on her promise to impersonate Dolly Parton; it was captured on video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDGZMwPQzgk
On 12 September Annika Socolofsky was declared winner of the Gaudeamus Award 2021
#AnnikaSocolofsky #DollyParton #GaudeamusAward #ZöllnerRocheDuo
