Armond Dorsey
The Breathing SuitePoetry and music-guided slow-breathing take you on a dream.
22/23 Music DepartmentThe Breathing Suite is a participatory piece that invites audiences to discover how to control their own breathing and reduce stress. A poem is narrated throughout the work, accompanied by immersive audio of breathing and field recordings. The dream unfolds with electronic effects and clarinet as the performer guides the audience to breathe deeply, asking: will you breathe with me?
The New Music Festival is a co-production of the Music Department and the Hopkins Center for the Arts, with support from The Leonard J. Reade 1917 Institute for American Music Fund, The Leslie Center for the Humanities, and a gift to the Don Glasgo Fund in memory of Alan Gottesman '13 and Friends of the Coast Jazz Orchestra.
Armond Dorsey (they/he) is a world-builder who uses their skills as an interdisciplinary artist and researcher to build worlds and spaces that create rituals around fugitivity, (re)imagine the meanings of mundane experiences, heal through storytelling and explore our interconnectedness to (re)envision how we organize with one another. Born and raised in Prince George's County, Maryland, Armond creates artistic work across mediums as a composer-clarinetist, playwright and poet, drawing from the stories Black folk within their community and the diaspora at-large have lived, continue living with, and dream of living in. Armond currently attends Dartmouth College as a first-year MA student in the Digital Music program. In June 2020, they graduated from Dartmouth College with a BA in Music modified with Neuroscience alongside a minor in African and African-American Studies.
Armond Dorsey - poet & composer
Eli Berman, Performer 1 - voice
Charles Peoples III, Performer 2 - voice
Mac Waters, Performer 3 - voice & viola
Acknowledgements: I offer deep appreciation to the Black Sound Lab, Guarini School Alumni Research Award, Hopkins Center for the Arts David A. Polk Fund, and Dartmouth Digital Musics program for their generous funding and program support. I also express my deepest gratitude to the faculty and staff who have helped make this performance possible: Taylor Ho Bynum and Bethany Younge for their tireless work in organizing this year's festival; Ash Fure, Samita Sinha, Allie Martin, and César Alvarez for nurturing my thoughts and endeavors with care; Vievee Francis for writing of breath so eloquently in her libretto for Ritual of Breath; and many other illustrious folks who so generously have offered me grace and care along my path. And to my performers and my peers including Rodrigo Martinez and Olivia Shortt who couldn't join for this performance, thank you for making it easier to breathe.
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