Composer Ted Hearne’s new choral work, FARMING, takes its texts from Jeff Bezos and William Penn to discover connections between farming, colonialism and capitalism.

Peter English/Courtesy of the artist

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Peter English/Courtesy of the artist

Composer Ted Hearne’s new choral work, FARMING, takes its texts from Jeff Bezos and William Penn to discover connections between farming, colonialism and capitalism.

Peter English/Courtesy of the artist

At a time when eating choices vary from quick meals to farm-to-table, comes a brand new, nine-part music cycle referred to as FARMING. The music raises provocative questions on our meals provide, huge agribusiness and this nation’s unique, Native American farmers. The composer Ted Hearne, a two-time Pulitzer finalist, engaged The Crossing, the Philadelphia-based choir identified for championing new music, to present the piece its premiere on a farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. One other free efficiency is slated for Sunday on the Caramoor Summer time Music Pageant.

Critic Nate Chinen (additionally the director of editorial content material at WRTI in Philadelphia) was on the debut efficiency and talked with NPR’s Scott Simon about Hearne’s flamboyant music and the way it connects farming, colonialism and capitalism.

Scott Simon: What was it like to listen to trendy choral music on a farm?

Nate Chinen: In a phrase, wild. The Crossing is understood for working in a recent fashion, however Ted Hearne turned that dial approach up. This music is twitchy, allusive, typically artificial and surrealistic. It delivers what I can solely describe as a full sensory overload.

The libretto pulls not solely from Jeff Bezos and William Penn, but additionally the social media feed of Uber Eats and the FAQ web page for a startup referred to as Farmer’s Fridge. The path, by Ashley Tata, actually leaned into the surreal — the singers wore vibrant neon costumes and the lighting cues and choreography all performed up this concept of a fancy machine gone completely haywire.

Haywire versus hay bales. What was the thought behind making a chunk about farming so high-tech?

Normally the phrase “farming” calls up a extra rustic thought — and Kings Oaks Farm, the Bucks County web site the place the piece was premiered, truly matches that idyllic imaginative and prescient. However trendy farming and agribusiness spell a way more sophisticated kind of actuality — and that is earlier than we start to consider all of the networks and interventions that go into our meals system, all the way in which as much as the DoorDash man who delivers your order. These are a few of the issues that Hearne needed to carry into this work, whereas making the most of a extremely tactile sense of place.

Among the phrases come from letters written by William Penn, the founding father of Pennsylvania and a Quaker chief. How does he match into a chunk about farming.

One necessary step alongside the trail to the commonwealth of Pennsylvania was Penn’s Treaty — an settlement with the Lenape individuals, promising a perpetual peace. And on one hand it is an admirable compromise — no bloodshed, proper? However there is a paternalistic impulse there. It led to his sons negotiating the Strolling Buy, which appropriated 1.2 million acres of land from the Lenape. One of many sources that Hearne makes use of in his libretto is a letter that William Penn wrote to a buddy, by which he says “My nation was confirmed to me,” referring to the British rulers. And in addition “My God has given it to me.” There is a form of entitlement there. William Penn has a fairly good fame, as a Quaker and a pacifist — however as Hearne put it once we talked, “There is no such thing as a good colonist.” Within the piece, his half is assigned to a soloist whose voice will get processed by means of an aggressive, dystopian digital filter.

One other main character is Jeff Bezos. How will we go from the seventeenth century to the patriarch, when you please, of on-line purchasing?

These are the 2 founding fathers of the piece, so to talk. Ted Hearne’s analysis led him to the work of a former farmworker, crop scientist and creator named Sarah Taber, who received him desirous about the origins of the phrase “farming,” which was all in regards to the leasing of land, not the cultivation of crops. Hearne instructed me: “This piece actually must be about that definition of the phrase and that it could, in fact, have resonance on an precise farm — however that the settler colonialist mentality of somebody like William Penn has a whole lot of resonances with titans of huge enterprise and billionaires who run large tech companies proper now.”

And on opening evening — this was attention-grabbing — inclement climate pressured the efficiency right into a small airplane hangar on the farm, which truly resembled a warehouse or achievement middle. And the singer enjoying Jeff Bezos made an entrance by rolling up in a John Deere buggy, singing a hilarious textual content, pulled from a Bezos keynote handle: “What does this must do with promoting books? And the reply: I say / Initially / We additionally promote groceries.”

What does the composer, Ted Hearne, and The Crossing hope would possibly come of this collaboration?

I believe they need to provoke thought. They need to entertain, and this piece definitely does. I have never talked about how humorous and engrossing it’s. However in addition they need to get us desirous about these points. When you admire The Crossing, as I do, and when you admire Ted Hearne as I do, you in all probability have already got some ideas in regards to the exploitation of Indigenous individuals and the industrialization of the meals provide and the state of our of our surroundings and sustainability. These are all high of thoughts points for many people. So, what sort of change can they’ll they enact with this music? You’ll be able to solely struggle your battle with the instruments at your disposal. Possibly not plowshares into swords, however possibly plowshares into experimental choral music.

Tom Huizenga produced this digital model of the radio story.