Making art as process of reclamation

Jennifer Koh stood onstage in Paine Concert Hall and lifted her bow to her violin, drawing out the first haunting notes of a Bach sonata. 

The back door of the hall then opened, and Davóne Tines ’09 entered singing a Handel aria, his rich bass-baritone interrupting Koh’s performance as he walked down the aisle. They traded notes in call-and-response until Tines joined Koh onstage, and the two performed a duet from Holst’s Songs for Voice and Violin, Op. 35.

The performance was the artists’ re-enactment of the real-life moment Tines and Koh met and began collaborating on “Everything Rises,” a staged performance that premiered at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2022. Tines and Koh told the audience at a recent evening talk hosted by the Department of Music how they created their show, which traces their family histories of racialized trauma and their own experiences navigating racism in the majority-white, tradition-bound world of classical music.

“Oftentimes things that are traditional or a part of the core of what institutions uphold go unexcavated, which is really detrimental,” Tines said, pausing to note the names of white European composers like Haydn, Schubert, and Wagner written on the walls in Paine Hall. “We say, ‘Oh, this Beethoven symphony is nonpareil, the best thing that you could be listening to’ so the institution doesn’t go to the lengths of actually self-reflecting to tell the audience why.”

Tines, who concentrated in sociology, was a member of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra and sang his first opera, Stravinsky’s “Rake’s Progress,” his senior year with the Dunster House Opera Society. Currently he combines opera with gospel and spirituals, and often uses art to highlight and confront societal issues.

The award-winning Tines recalled meeting the violin virtuoso Koh backstage at the Paris Opera several years ago, and when they spotted each other, the only two people of color in the room, each felt an immediate connection. 

“We banded together and went to dinner, and continued to get to know each other,” Tines said. “As we compared and contrasted our life experiences, we found that we had a lot of similarities in our journeys as artists of color within classical music.” 

Soon after, they began working on “Everything Rises” and slowly assembled a team of collaborators, including composer Ken Ueno, Ph.D. ’05. They approached the show through a lens of lineage, telling the stories of Koh’s mother, a refugee from North Korea during the Korean War, and Tines’ grandmother, who holds vivid memories of anti-Black discrimination and violence in the U.S. Recorded interviews with the two women are included in the show.

“[Famed cellist] Yo-Yo Ma often says that it takes three generations to make an artist: the first generation to pull the family out of poverty, the second generation to become educated, and then the third generation then has the freedom and foundation to have creative pursuits,” Tines said. 

The lyrics of one song by Ueno, “Story of the Moth,” comes directly from frustrations Tines expressed about feeling objectified as a performer.

“Those words, which might seem affronting or surprising — ‘dear white people,’ ‘money, access and fame’ ‘I yearn for your validation’ — these were all things I’ve actually felt,” Tines said.

Tines and Koh adapted a setting of the 1930s anti-racism protest song “Strange Fruit” — which they also performed in their show — into a film for Carnegie Hall’s “Voices of Hope” series. That project came together shortly after the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings. In it, their music accompanies a gallery of racist political cartoons and CCTV footage of anti-Asian violence.

Koh said she’s noticed a clear difference in audience enthusiasm when she performs, say, a work by Tchaikovsky as opposed to a socially and politically charged piece like “Embers,” which was inspired by her years of anger and frustration over anti-Asian hate in the U.S.

“As performers, of course [we hope] you guys will clap at the end,” Koh said. “But to a certain degree, art is not about entertainment. It’s about confrontation of oneself. It’s not only an excavation of our own experience, but something, I think, for the audience to experience as well.”

One of their biggest challenges was finding the perfect way to end their show. At first, Tines said, he had suggested ending with the triumphantly hopeful “Ode to Joy” — both the Beethoven and the gospel hymn version — to suggest a move toward unity. 

But Koh disagreed, saying that type of resolution would be letting the audience “off the hook.” 

Tines turned to her. “Another thing you said was, ‘Davóne, you don’t have to give that to them. That can be for you,’” herecalled. “’You can find resolution and hope for yourself, but the audience will continue to contend with what was presented.’”

Ultimately, they went with an original composition by Ueno titled “Better Angels” (a reference to Lincoln’s first inaugural address), which they perform directly to each other, a choice Tines felt struck the appropriate chord.

“You want people to go to places that are doubtful,” Tines said. “You hope that those things sit with them, but you don’t want to let them off the hook. You don’t want them to eviscerate what actually has been built in the performance.”