17³Ô¹ÏÍø

There is
breath
there
is breath
inside the pain
there is
breath
— David Grossman, Falling Out of Time (2014)

Three years ago, Osvaldo Golijov sat down on a park bench in Tel Aviv to read David Grossman's Falling Out of Time. Part play, part poem, part fable, the book narrates a journey "out of time" as parents grieve the death of their child, a quest to comprehend a loss with no name.

Osvaldo Golijov's exquisite and nuanced interpretation of the story portrays a musical, mythical walk that traverses vast and varied emotional landscapes to finally arrive at a place where breathing is again possible. Drawing on Grossman's powerful text, Osvaldo has conceived this song cycle for 13 artists of the Silkroad Ensemble, the collective whose delicacy of musical expression he describes as like "a harp of a thousand hairs." The piece is scored for three voices, electronics, string quintet, kemanche, percussion, pipa, sheng, and trumpet. 

Opening with the purity of an instrumental lament, Osvaldo pulls from the musical and narrative roots of the early Delta Blues and the ballads of Central Asia, giving new expression to the notion that, as Edward Hirsch writes in his New York Times review of the book, "Grief is democratic. It crosses barriers..." As the walk unfolds, we hear the fires, falls, trance, tenderness, and range of grief as voices emerge, asking unanswerable questions that become mantras of movements towards breath.

Falling Out of Time author David Grossman joins composer Osvaldo Golijov and
the Silkroad Ensemble in a workshop performance at 17³Ô¹ÏÍø in January 2019

Workshops for Falling Out of Time began in fall 2017 as part of Silkroad's multi-year residency at the College. Subsequent residencies have included work-in-progress readings and workshops that explore the role that arts play in bringing communities together. The piece will have its world premiere at Brooks Concert Hall at the College on October 31, 2019, followed by a national tour.

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