Inbal Segev: 21st Century Women

Cellist Inbal Segev, known for her "glowing, burnished tone," (The Washington Post) presents a program of music for solo cello by five of today's prominent women composers—Anna Clyne, Missy Mazzoli, Reena Esmail, Kaija Saariaho, and Gity Razaz—at Roulette.

The evening's focal point, Legend of Sigh (2015) by Gity Razaz, is a multimedia, immersive piece for cello and electronics written for Segev with video and projection design by filmmaker Carmen Kordas. Legend of Sigh explores the themes of birth, transformation, and death through the retelling of an old Azerbaijani folktale about a mysterious being, Sigh, who appears every time someone lets out a heartfelt sigh, unknowingly calling out to him.

Segev will also perform a solo cello arrangement of Anna Clyne's Rest These Hands (2009), which shares the title with a poem written by Clyne's mother in the last year of her life; Missy Mazzoli's A Thousand Tongues (2009), a short but intense response to a text by Stephen Crane; Reena Esmail's Perhaps (2005), composed in collaboration with video and projection designer, dancer, and filmmaker Heather McCalden; and Kaija Saariaho's Spins and Spells (1997), of which Saariaho writes, "The title evokes the two gestures which are at the origin of the work: on the one hand the pattern which I call 'spinning tops' turning around on the one spot or undergoing changes, and on the other, timeless moments, centered on the sound colour and texture."