Freedom Bridge (Extracts)

Freedom Bridge was commissioned and performed by the Birmingham Opera Company in 2017 in Birmingham. The work is a five-minute scena for soprano, violin, and cello.

The scene takes place in 1965 during the Freedom March over Pettus Bridge in Alabama, a march led by Martin Luther King Jr. and organized as part of protests intended to secure voting rights for black Americans. I based the scenario on a firsthand account of the march written by Hella Pick, who reported on the events for The Guardian newspaper.¹ Pick, an Austrian journalist who was rescued from Nazi Germany as a child, described the actions of a nun who walked among the marchers; the character of the Marcher is based on Hella's nun. The vocal line builds tension by compressing phrases that are intensified by moving figures in the instruments.

My practice-based research shows how newly commissioned operas continue to be created by patriarchally driven criteria. Plots of traditional and new operas are disproportionately furnished with lead women who tragically die. At the core of their creation is the concept that the composer (male or female) should emulate the values of a nineteenth-century male hero. I propose a new methodology that, through my practice-based research, requires me to interact with audiences at the point of creation. I also passionately engage in creating alternative models for female characters that are defined by their actions rather than by their sexuality.

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Scene: A female protester joins the march knowing that previous marches ended in violence. The marcher's feet are blistered; she is burned by the sun and showered with verbal abuse by counterprotesters. She is afraid but bravely continues. Ultimately, she is moved to compassion for her abusers and draws courage from singing fragments of lines from the poem "The Divine Image" by William Blake.