feeld songs - Choir and Harp

Ensemble: SATB Choir, Harp

Duration: 40 Minutes

Written: Fall/Winter 2019

Text by Jos Charles

Excerpts Premiere: March 10, 2020
55 W 13th St, New York NY 10011

Full Premiere: KC VITAs, May 30, 2021
St. James Catholic Church, Liberty, MO

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I. its ther / inn the feeld
II. fete upended
III. & if the earth is flat
IV. lik dayelite on hils

V. deepre eech yere

VI. befor the
VII. the principld skye
VIII. windoe / that is the whorld
IX. mothe inn the guarden

X. Medalyons

On the Text:

“‘feeld’ is a lyrical unraveling of the circuitry of gender and speech, defiantly making space for bodies that have been historically denied their own vocabulary. In ‘feeld,’ Charles stakes her claim on the language available to speak about trans experience, reckoning with the narratives that have come before by reclaiming the language of the past [...] making visible what was formerly and forcefully hidden: trauma, liberation, strength, and joy. “Urgent and vital, feeld composes a new narrative of what it means to live inside a marked body.”

Program Note:

“feeld,” was sticking out to me on visits to several bookstores around Manhattan and Brooklyn in Summer 2019. This unparalleled volume by Jos Charles contains 60 poems that concern the experiences distinct and unique to the transgender community, as well as the language we use to discuss gender, marginalized people, and how accurately our language portrays and politicizes a community.

The songs exist within the tight confines of constructed language, and reckon with how especially for trans and queer people, the world (the feeld) is often rendered indescribable with the conventional rhetoric we have at our disposal. Throughout the cycle, the choir moves through varied compounded topics of objectification, alternative facts, the process of coming out, sources of systemic hate and violence, being expected to carry trauma, to reaching markers of life expectancy for trans people, and feelings of genuine and abundant kindness.

These songs should serve not only as a catalyst for the text, but also as a catalyst for local action that is impactful within the communities where they are performed. Facilitate mutual aid, highlight the work of LGBTQIA2S+ organizations in the community, break the traditional barriers of choral music that exclude people by nature, and invite them in. A common understanding of how the feeld might work for everyone in it, how that could change, and where every one of us needs to intersect in that narrative is necessary to build the world we want.

The text of “feeld songs” is used with permission by Jos Charles, September ‘19

Excerpts Premiere, March 2020: