Mar y sol

Mar y sol

In October 2022, contralto Rose Naggar-Tremblay approached me about creating a new song cycle for her, to be premiered as part of a dramatic solo recital at Salle Bourgie, the concert hall of Montreal’s Museum of Fine Arts. Projects such as this are among my favourite artistic adventures: Rose’s program was a response to a visiting exhibit of works by Venezuelan-American sculptor Marisol, whose iconic work was instrumental in the birth of the pop art movement. Rose, an accomplished song-writer herself, wrote the words to the new cycle, in concert with participants in museum community activities. Thus, our new work is both fundamentally collaborative and deeply integrated into the offerings of the museum and the fabric of artistic life in Montreal at that moment. 

Mar y sol focuses on three works from Marisol’s oeuvre. Mi mama y yo, featured at the opening of the exhibit, shows a small girl standing on an ornate bench, shielding her mother, seated there, with an equally ornate parasol. The mother’s smile and the girl’s fierce determination inspired Rose’s enigmatic poem, which I deconstruct further in the form of the song.

The Party, holding place at the center of the exhibit, is a grand installation, iterating Marisol herself in many forms: she is both all the glittering attendees, in various gowns and guises, as well as the servants at a gathering. In the second movement of the song cycle, we explore Marisol’s silence as a child, and the tension of her position in the public eye, representing both an ideal of feminine beauty and as a stand-in for all female artists.

Je pars, the third movement in the cycle, speaks of Marisol’s repeated choice to disappear from the intense public scrutiny that followed her career. In these moments she re-made herself, following artistic impulses that brought her to new subjects and new media. Her move toward vibrantly colored sea- and landscape paintings were the impetus for this poem, which holds her up as an inspiration, showing the strength of both femininity and self-knowledge.

Mar y sol was commissioned by Fondation Arte Musica and Rose Naggar-Tremblay and is dedicated to Rose. Premiered December 13, 2023, Bourgie Hall in Montréal, QC by Rose Naggar-Tremblay and Julien Leblanc.

“… There is some word painting, and one feels the presence of the sea: especially in the melodies, one feels the momentum, the soaring flights. The piano provides something that is more ironic: the pop art element, the comic element, and self-deprecation. But there is humour for sure! The first and last movements are primarily melodic, while the central part is more spoken.”

– Rose Naggar-Tremblay