- [Announcer] In partnership with the Curtis Institute of Music, WHYY presents the following program.

- My name is Maggie Cox and I'm a bassist from Ohio.

(deep double bass music) I remember when I was going to sleep when I was little, my mom would put on this Charlotte Church CD, "Voice of an Angel," and I would listen to that while I was falling asleep.

And I remember really loving that.

And my dad would put on, like, Bruce Springsteen downstairs.

I mean, my sister would just run in circles around the living room.

My parents aren't professional musicians but they love music.

My mom was singing in the church choir for a while and my dad really likes going to concerts and loves music and they both know how to play piano and we always had music on at home.

But yeah, they're not professional musicians.

(dramatic double bass music) Summer 2020 I was doing online Tanglewood Music Center and I was, we got paired with one of the composing fellows and I was paired with the composer Angela Slater, and she wrote a piece for me called "A Door to Yesterday."

(deep double bass music) She emailed me and asked if I wanted to do a recital for her project, 'cause she has like a long running project called "Illuminate Women's Music."

And she asked if I wanted to do a recital, but the only, like, not catch, like the only requirement was that all of the composers or all of the pieces had to be composed by women.

(deep double bass music) (deep double bass music continues) (deep double bass music continues) (deep double bass music continues) (deep double bass music continues) (deep double bass music continues) (deep double bass music continues) Every step of that project was like really, really cool and just exciting and like putting together a program and trying to find, you know, a program of music all by women for solo bass and that would be like an attractive, really varied program building.

That was really cool, and it ended up that four out of the five pieces were written in 2020 and a lot of them reflected on current events that happened that year.

And so it just felt very timely and relevant and all of the composers are all live and they were all really generous with their time and we went back and forth so many times, and I sent them clips of me playing and we changed things in the music.

And then by the time, so we filmed the recital at a place in Akron, and then they each sent a short video of them talking about their pieces and just, you know, talking about what they were feeling when they wrote it and like what they want the audience members to understand.

And so by the time the whole recital was prepared, it just felt really beautiful and just a very like loving process.

(deep enthusiastic double bass music) (deep enthusiastic double bass music continues) (deep enthusiastic double bass music continues) (deep enthusiastic double bass music continues) (deep enthusiastic double bass music continues) (deep enthusiastic double bass music continues) (deep enthusiastic double bass music continues) I don't really see classical music as separate from any other kind of music or other kinds of art.

Playing it and practicing it is like a way to process feelings and experiences.

It's just how I communicate a lot of things.

(bright cheerful instrumental music) I think at its best classical music is just another kind of art that can help people feel present and feel like a sense of awe or be with something beautiful.

I think like music or art or nature is just kind of tools for grounding us, and just like a reminder that kind of shakes you out of the day to day, the mundane.

And I think it's all really important, but I think it would be a good thing if we thought of classical music as more like part of a whole or just one tool in the toolbox for communicating with people.

(pensive double bass music) (pensive double bass music continues) (pensive double bass music continues) (pensive double bass music continues) - Darian Donovan Thomas, "The Disintegrating Foundation Under a Catastrophe of Air."

First heard a recording of it on YouTube.

My friend Kebra, I think, premiered it or produced like a really beautiful recording, and I remember just stumbling across it on YouTube and just like had like full body chills and was just really moved and really wanted to just like work on it and experience playing it.

And I think that was commissioned from this new group Bass Players for Black Composers.

So I found it on their website and I just started working on it and I hadn't really played a lot like that, 'cause there's a lot of, he wrote a lot of improvised lines where he would have like a cell of notes where he had to improvise while singing the line that he wrote.

(audience applauds) Hi, my name is Maggie Cox and I'm going to be playing a piece by Darian Donovan Thomas called "A Disintegrating Foundation Under a Catastrophe of Air."

And this piece is probably pretty unfamiliar, so I just wanted to read some of the composer's notes before I got started.

So the composer writes, "This piece is about using the contrast of a stressed and jagged foundation with smooth and questioning air as a means to illustrate the head space we occupy during June of 2020.

There's the smoothness of breath that you have when you wake up, but the jaggedness of it when anxiety takes over and you remember disease.

There's the foundational support of our idea of America.

Then, there is the active disintegration of it over the past couple of weeks with protests and lynchings.

This piece is a series of swells to and from the two faces of chaos, the hectic and the void.

Since the performer is still alive, I wanted them to use their voice, their lungs, to contribute to the story.

There are two songs quoted here.

'I'll Fly Away,' an old white spiritual by Albert E Brumley, and 'Which Side Are You On,' an old Union song by Florence Reece.

There's a lot happening in the world right now.

My job as a composer is to make sure everyone confronts these ideas and asks the right questions.

My way of putting it succinctly, A Foundation Disintegrates Under a Catastrophe of Air."

Thank you.

It's like poetry, reading the title or reading any of the notes or the lyrics or the text in the piece, you know, and then performing it.

I just wanted to communicate that same feeling that I heard or that I felt when I first heard the piece.

And yeah, it was really fun to play it at Curtis.

(deep uneasy double bass music) (deep uneasy double bass music continues) A disintegrating.

(deep uneasy double bass music continues) A disintegrating foundation.

(deep uneasy double bass music continues) A disintegrating foundation under.

A disintegrating foundation under a catastrophe of air.

(deep uneasy double bass music continues) ♪ Some glad ♪ ♪ Some glad morn ♪ (deep uneasy double bass music continues) ♪ Some ♪ (deep uneasy double bass music continues) ♪ Some glad morning ♪ (deep uneasy double bass music continues) ♪ Some glad morning when our lives ♪ ♪ Are over ♪ ♪ Who will fly away ♪ ♪ To their home on God's celestial shore ♪ ♪ Or who will end their way ♪ ♪ Who is in the fields witnessing ♪ ♪ Who has turned away ♪ ♪ Our friends died while they turned a blind eye ♪ ♪ Our friends died while they turned a eye ♪ ♪ What do I do ♪ ♪ With these lungs that are filled with life ♪ ♪ Who could fly away ♪ (deep uneasy double bass music continues) ♪ Which side am I on ♪ ♪ Which side am I on ♪ (deep uneasy double bass music continues) ♪ Which side are you on ♪ ♪ Which side are you on ♪ (deep uneasy double bass music continues) ♪ Which side are you on ♪ (audience applauds) I don't think I have like an artist signature, maybe like as an artist, I think my goal is just to like have a positive impact on the bass world and the classical music world.

And even my friends who are musicians but don't play classical music, like they play other kinds of music, it feels like classical music is kind of purposefully standoffish from other kinds of art.

And even, yeah, a lot of classical musicians I know that maybe don't fit the traditional mold of a classical musician, they don't feel like welcome in this field.

And I feel like maybe that's 'cause people are defensive, because it feels like maybe the rest of the world isn't as interested in classical music, or it's like losing, it's not staying relevant, and instead of coming to terms with why, I feel like people or classical music as an institution is pretty quick to get defensive and blame, you know, the people or whatever for not understanding or not appreciating like high art.

(dark double bass music) (dark double bass music continues) (dark double bass music continues) (dark double bass music continues) I would like to keep playing the instrument.

I am probably not gonna like fight an uphill battle to keep playing music if it doesn't seem like it's meant to be.

I'm enjoying it right now.

But I don't know, like sometimes I feel like it might be easier to make a positive impact and help people if I were to do something else.

So I think I'll keep, I would like to keep playing bass for as long as it keeps working out and as long as it seems like a positive and productive thing to do (dramatic double bass music) (dramatic double bass music continues) (pensive double bass music) (pensive double bass music continues)