2023 Julie Leven Artistic Project:
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Songs of Life

Songs of Life is series of arrangements and commissioned compositions for string quartet based upon songs of significant importance to our audiences, related to their identity, stories and emotions. SMB musicians will gather stories and selections from partner site listeners, and four area composers will create new works based on these discussions. The new works will then be premiered for our listeners and community in September of 2023.

Part I: Listener Feedback

In January 2023, a quartet of SMB musicians presented a program of music based on four emotions - PEACE, SADNESS, HOPE, AND JOY. Each musician curated musical selections based on an assigned emotion, and asked listeners what their choices would have been. Using dialogue and ideas from listeners, SMB will commission new works based on the pieces audiences chose as their "Songs of Life." 

Photo: Kiyoshi, Adrian, Lizzy, and Yonah perform at HRI in Cambridge during the Songs of Life program 

Some Selections from our Audiences:

For Your Eyes Only by J. Cole
"Reminds me I could be better or do better for my daughter before I die."

When Summer Dies by Dead Maus
"It moves me through summer into fall."

Signore, Ascolta by Giacomo Puccini
"In my last course I got the opportunity to sing it. Theatre and Opera has always been involved with my life
but I have little resources and acceptance to express myself through opera."

Musicians

Kiyoshi Hayashi

Adrian Anantawan

Yonah Zur

Lizzy Cook

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Part II: New Works

Four composers will listen to dialogue from the January concerts, analyze songs that were suggested, and read comments from our audiences. Over the next few months they will create new works inspired by these conversations and ideas, to be premiered in live concerts and studio recordings in September 2023. 

Composers
Click on the photos below to find out more about our composers!

Che Buford

Anthony Green

Sato Matsui

Francine Trester

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Part III: Public Concert

The last stage of the project was to premiere the new works for our program audiences and a public concert in September 2023. 

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Why this project?

• Individuals experiencing homelessness are often dehumanized
  • ​“Research by Harris and Fiske (2010) showed that many people don’t see homeless people as real human beings. Harris and Fiske made brain scans of regular people looking at objects and human beings. When looking at human beings, the medial prefrontal cortex was activated, which is involved in social cognition. When looking at objects, the medial prefrontal cortex didn’t light up, and the same happened when they saw pictures of heavy marginalized groups like substance dependent or homeless people.” 

 

• Studies have shown that people exhibit empathy avoidance toward the homeless.
  • “Often people fail to respond to those in need. Why? In addition to cognitive and perceptual processes such as oversight and diffusion of responsibility, a motivational process may lead people, at times, to actively avoid feeling empathy for those in need, lest they be motivated to help them. It is predicted that empathy avoidance will occur when, before exposure to a person in need, people are aware that (1) they will be asked to help this person and (2) helping will be costly. To test this prediction, Ss were given the choice of hearing 1 of 2 versions of an appeal by a homeless man for help: an empathy-inducing version or a non-empathy-inducing version. As predicted, those aware that they soon would be given a high-cost opportunity to help the man chose to hear the empathy-inducing version less often than did those either unaware of the upcoming opportunity or aware but led to believe that helping involved low cost.”

 

• The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the homelessness crisis in cities across America.
  • “For the many households that had to tap savings or go into debt to cover lost income last year, the impacts of the pandemic will linger well into the future. A Joint Center review of surveys conducted over the past year found that about a quarter of the renters with COVID-related job losses reported that they had substantially depleted their savings, another quarter had borrowed from families and friends, and a tenth had turned to payday or personal loans. Even assuming they regain their financial footing, these households will have fewer resources to draw on whether for everyday needs, emergencies, or for a downpayment on a home. Recovering from the devastating effects of the pandemic will be harder yet for those who have lost loved ones to COVID-19 or are themselves suffering from the long-term debilitating effects of the virus.”​​

Why Shelter Music Boston?

• Shelter Music Boston (SMB) has had an thirteen year track record of delivering high quality classical music concerts to audiences experiencing homelessness
  
• We have created innovative programming centered around collaborative composition projects (i.e. Water for My Soul), amplifying the voices of diverse composers and identities (i.e. Voices from the Land, The Florence Price Opera)
• SMB has a developed network of partners in both the social service and arts sectors and will continue to be a leading organization in creating interdisciplinary, collaborative work in Boston