This summer All Score Urbana began its next Urbana Arts and Culture grant-supported program–Community of Song. We are current working on over a dozen projects with composers, songwriters, performers, and singers. We will be announcing the specifics of the upcoming February concert in the next few months. I have loved seeing the collaboration, question asking, and mentorship that have been coming out of these projects. While a lot of art-making involves technical feedback, it makes me happy that people seem to get how we try to make this a warm, empathetic working space (in this case, a mostly virtual working space).
A related project finds some of the teaching artists collaborating with former Urbana Poet Laureate Will Reger’s Red Herring Poetry Celebration, another Urbana Arts and Culture-funded program. ShayLyssa Alexander and Mike McAndrew will be performing Possibility of Routine, a new song I wrote that is inspired by “Migraine,” a poem by Anne Zysman-Schulman. I have wanted to write for ShayLyssa’s amazing voice for a very long time and I am excited to hear her performance this Friday at the Channing-Murray Foundation.
Ralph Lewis: Composer 