Program Note:

Fissured Edifices, Fractured Artifices is a meditation on identity and place, specifically of one’s hometown or birthplace. Lately, I have found myself contemplating my own relationship with my hometown, how my environment shaped my morals and beliefs, and why I feel so connected to this city I call home. Is it the presence of family and friends, the physical spaces of a city, or an emotional attachment to my experiences that keeps me grounded here? If any of those things disappeared, would the connection change as well? It is the natural progression of places to change and evolve, but it is admittedly strange and devastating to see the corner of the city in which I was raised being gentrified. Day by day, I see less of myself in the city I call home, and maybe that’s a good thing. The title of this work is from a line in Li-Young Lee’s poem “The City In Which I Love You.”