Composer Hannah Kendall’s “The Spark Catchers” has its U.S. premiere with the Seattle Symphony this week. (Chris Alexander)
John Malveaux of
writes:
Seattle Symphony spotlights diversity
The Seattle Times
June 4, 2019
These days, a title such as “The Spark Catchers” might sound like
a trilogy of young-adult fantasy novels, soon to be adapted into a
series of movies coming to a theater near you.
In reality, “The Spark Catchers” is far less fanciful: a 2012 poem by British writer Lemn Sissay,
commemorating the mostly Irish-immigrant women who went on strike over
safety conditions at an East London match factory in 1888. The title is a
lyrical reference to keen-eyed workers at the factory who caught and
crushed flying sparks before the building was set ablaze.
Which brings us to the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. This week sees the
U.S. premiere of composer Hannah Kendall’s orchestral work “The Spark
Catchers,” which had its world premiere in London’s Royal Albert Hall
during the 2017 BBC Proms. It was performed by the four-year-old
Chineke! Orchestra, made up of young black and minority ethnic classical
musicians from the U.K. and Europe.
Kendall, who will be at Benaroya Hall for three performances of “The
Spark Catchers,” will stay another day for an “In the Spotlight: Hannah
Kendall” event on Monday, June 10, in Seattle Symphony’s new Octave 9 performance space.
During a phone interview, Londoner Kendall, 35, says her 10-minute
“The Spark Catchers” is not a programmatic piece (i.e., it’s not an
instrumental retelling of Sissay’s specific narrative). Instead it’s a
flowering of the collective identity many Londoners experienced at the
onset of the 2012 Summer Olympics, which were held in that city. That
match factory, long vanished, had been built on one of the edges of what
became Olympic Park, hub for the games.
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