This past week saw the culmination of composition, music, poetry and ecology performances in the artistic collaboration known as “Inter Alia”.
The Inter Alia program brought together orchestral and written arts to explore themes in nature and ecology, and to remind people to “listen more closely to the world around us; to the trees, their histories, and the life they shelter.”
To do so, the UNCSA symphony orchestra and the Wake Forest Symphony orchestra united to perform a piece from the world premiere of Inter Alia, created by composer David Kirkland Garner. This piece was based on the poem “Inter Alia” by Ishon Hutchinson, which is dedicated to the native tree species of Western North Carolina—including the famed trees on Wake Forest’s campus.
This brief Latin phrase translates to “among other things”, which was appropriate as Wake students, staff, faculty and others were encouraged to take a moment and appreciate the beauty of the art.
The music and the poetry encouraged the audience to be present with the world around them, and to stay connected with the things we see every day. Wake Forest is renowned for its beauty and the trees, but we see them every day, which leads to familiarity. This performance served as a reminder to be aware of the natural artistry that we see every day.
“The great, old south magnolia seen at noon on campus, its blunt galvanized sheen distorting itself into a Medusa rage, the hapitc wave of roots crashing down into the earth and surging back into the air…”, Hutchinson wrote.
The program also hosted several events in the week leading up to the main performance on Friday, Oct. 24, including a poetry reading with Huchinson, a composition master class and a collaboration with a class in the Environment and Sustainability Studies department.
The concert on Friday featured both orchestras, and the powerful, haunting notes left a lasting impression on the audience before the reading of “Inter Alia” by Hutchinson. Following the reading, the orchestras united again to perform “Inter Alia, North Carolina Trees” by Kirkland-Garner, leaving audiences with a musical and poetic connection to the forests embracing the campus and beyond.
Wake Forest sophomore Owais Kamran attended the concert last Friday and was moved by the work.
“It was engaging and interesting to see all these different forms of music synergizing together: music, poetry and an opera singer singing the poem as the music played with her,” Kamran said. “It was cool to see how the music complemented the poetry. For example, when she sang the “hum of the bees” line from the poem, the orchestra vibrated the string instruments in a way that reminded me of a bee’s buzzing.”
