Diversity Rules Magazine

12|Diversity Rules Magazine | Mar 2023 Hailed by The Guardian as "a cellist of power and grace," Grammy Award-nominated cellist Seth Parker Woods announces the world premiere recording of his mul media concert tour-de-force, Difficult Grace – featuring works by Fredrick Gifford, Coleridge-Tay- lor Perkinson, Monty Adkins, Nathalie Joachim, Alvin Singleton, and Ted Hearne – on Cedille Records. Difficult Grace is a semi-autobiographical explora on of Woods' iden ty; past/present histories and per- sonal growth that draws inspira on from the Great Migra on; excerpts from the historic newspaper, The Chicago Defender; immigra on; and the poetry of Kemi Alabi and Dudley Randall. Out today, the album's first single, Ted Hearne's A Wedding, or What We Unlearned from Descartes, is accompanied by a music video featuring footage from the world premiere of Difficult Grace at 92NY in November 2022. An evoca ve, theatrical, and genre-bending collabora on with choreographer and dancer Roderick George, Difficult Grace features Woods in the triple role of cellist, narrator/guide, and movement ar st, performing music wri en for and with him with visual artwork by Jacob Lawrence, Barbara Earl Thomas, Zoë McLean, and Freida Abtan; a gripping performance by George; sound design by Christopher Bo a; and ligh ng and visual design by Thomas Dunn. The album's cover art is Barbara Earl Thomas's Joyful Noise (2022), which features Woods likeness and premiered as part of her latest solo ex- hibi on in New York City. Woods performed the show at UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance in Los Angeles in December 2022 and will bring it to Chicago's Harris Theater on Thurs- day, April 20, 2023 at 6:00pm CT and the San Diego Symphony's Currents Series on Tuesday, November 28, 2023 at 7:30pm PT. This release marks Woods' debut recording on Cedille. He was nominated for a 2023 Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance as a soloist in Wild Up's recording, Julius Eastman Vol. 2: Joy Boy on New Amsterdam Records (2022). In his booklet-opening notes, writer John Fallas states, "In a 1934 essay, the writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston suggests that there is something com- mon – what she calls a 'will to adorn' – uni ng a wide variety of African American cultural ar cula ons, from styles of speech to clothing and home decora- on. Understood thus, adornment may be both an expression of self and community and a crea ve response to trouble – especially when that trouble arises in the context of a shared history of pain and injus ce. This aesthe c of adornment – of constant, joyous mul plica on – is embodied in the cellist Seth Parker Woods' ambi ous, already acclaimed project Difficult Grace, with its relentless, exploratory acts of transla on across different ar s c media and dizzy- ing expansion of what we might expect a solo instru- mentalist to do, on stage or in the studio." The album opens with its tle work, the world pre- miere recording of Fredrick Gifford's Difficult Grace, followed by "Calvary Os nato" from Coleridge-Tay- lor Perkinson's Lamenta ons: Black/Folk Song Suite. Next, Woods performs the world premiere record- ings of Monty Adkins' Winter Tendrils and Nathalie Joachim's The Race: 1915, succeeded by Alvin Single- ton's Argoru II. Then, Joachim joins Woods as vocalist in a performance of her own Dam Mwen Yo. The al- bum closes with the world premiere of Ted Hearne's mul -movement Freefucked, featuring Hearne on vocals and electronics on the final track, "A er We Ruin." Grace - Con't on page 18 Difficult Grace Seth Parker Woods Releases Album on Cedille Records

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