Can We Know the Sound of Forgiveness
Can We Know the Sound of Forgiveness delves into the social complexities of chaos, desperation, and forgiveness. The body of work grapples with daunting, complicated questions facing a divided humanity, by exploring the imperatives of knowing forgiveness.
Inspired by the monumental scale drawing, Can We Know the Sound of Forgiveness, this body of work matured into a multidisciplinary performance that merges visual art, music, dance, movement, and spoken word to create an urgent new language for collective expression. The collaboration seeks to encourage hope in a dark and divisive time by conceiving a transformational work that is complex, moving and immersed in a throughline that carries us from violence and conflict to healing and forgiveness.
“Put us to the question
Can we learn from Bach
Can we know the sound of forgiveness
Baroque tables of witness
Grow in the wilderness
Rooted in gilded illusion”
–James Drake
The multidisciplinary project, by the same title as the drawing, Can We Know the Sound of Forgiveness, is an immersive performance that unfolds in five movements, with a score by renowned composer Gabriela Ortiz, text and lyrics by award-winning author Benjamin Alire Sáenz, and 24 singers from the Grammy-winning chamber choir, The Crossing, conducted by Donald Nally. The performance features stage movement by artist Shaun Leonardo, accompanied by local US military veteran performers from each city in which the project will travel; additional music by master flutist Alejandro Escuer; and a dance ensemble from Houston Ballet Academy. Can We Know the Sound of Forgiveness tells its story from the perspective of “the Earth, the Land, the Soil, the Sand,” which “do not demand our daughters and our sons as sacrifices.”
Exhibitions
JAMES DRAKE:
Can We Know the Sound of Forgiveness
Moody Gallery, Houston, TX
September 18 – November 20, 2021
JAMES DRAKE:
Can We Know the Sound of Forgiveness
Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans, LA
January 8 – February 18, 2022