June 5, 2024
7:30pm MST
Town Hall Collaborative, Denver
$20 General Admission / $15 for Students, Seniors, and Artists
Purchase Tickets here!
Celebrate Pride with the Playground Ensemble!
This year’s Pride concert features the words and voices of local trans and non-binary folks telling their stories. Our five newly-commissioned works use acoustic instruments, interview clips, electronics, and live vocals to present compelling and powerful queer messages through music. Familiar themes bear repeating: in response to hate, we love ourselves and each other. In response to lies, we speak and live our truths.
More information on anti-trans legislation:
2024 Anti-Trans Bills Tracker
2023-24 Trans Legislation Tracker
Emotional Support Resources:
The Trevor Project
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention Resources
Colorado organizations to support:
Transgender Center of the Rockies
The Center on Colfax
One Colorado
SPLASH Youth of Northern Colorado
Inside Out Youth Services
THE PROGRAM
Blue Butterfly (2024) by Florence Anna Maunders, composer and Ty Baniewicz, storyteller
Performed by:
Deborah Marshall, clarinet
David Short, cello
Luke Wachter, percussion
Ryan Fiegl, electronics
Composer notes:
In response to the surge of anti-trans legislation in the US, the Playground Ensemble gathered recordings made by trans/non-binary folks telling their stories. This piece, Blue Butterfly, is a response to one of those recordings, and uses selections of the participant's own words, in their own voice, as part of the musical texture. The original audio is an extended story about a childhood friend and some formative experiences, and refers to the idea of the titular Blue Butterfly appearing, who can grant wishes. In selecting which parts of the audio to include in this new composition, I avoided the urge to simply retell the story. The original spoken words do that very well without my musical voice interjecting also. What I chose to do was to focus on the feelings expressed in the text, and to highlight those phrases which describe or evoke the speaker's emotional states. Musically, there's also an ongoing feeling of transition, of one thing becoming another - something which really resonates with me both as a person and as an artist. The combination of recorded vocals, processed electronic sound and a trio of live instruments presented some amazing opportunities to respond to these emotional concepts in an oblique and complex way. The sound-world thus created reflects my ongoing interests in the possibilities present in the interaction between "contemporary concert music" and electronic dance styles such as techno and D&B resulting in a hectic and dis-orientating collision of genres, eventually leaving the listener in a questioning limbo.
We’re All Just People (2024) by Spencer Evans, composer and Frank, Keith Wolfe, Kham-shem, and Liam, storytellers
Performed by
Ryan Fiegl, electronics
Storyteller notes:
The LGBTQ+ Center on Colfax has a program for young adults called SAGA. Four SAGA participants: Frank, Keith Wolfe, Kham-shem, and Liam, agreed to tell us their stories. Spencer Evans used clips from their recordings and created We’re All Just People.
Composer notes:
Trans people deserve to exist.
silence goes light (2024) by Rain Michael, composer and Mel, storyteller
Performed by:
Leah Podzimek, voice
David Short, cello
Luke Wachter, percussion
Ryan Fiegl, Electronics
I. silence
II. goes
III. light.
Storyteller notes (and lyrics):
"I need something more than 'present yourself in a feminine manner.'"
"I think it can be played co-op. Would you be interested in joining?"
"I don't want to be wrapped up in my transness. I'll still love computers, books, vidya games."
- Mel
Composer notes:
Composer, cellist, gamer, speedrun enjoyer, thoughtful friend, brilliant student, and so so much more, Mel (she/they) is someone I never got the chance to meet. And yet, in a short amount of time spent hearing about them and reading some of their messages, I got to love a little piece of Mel, an echo of her life. Heavily inspired by vidya games and my own reactions towards Mel's story, silence goes light is a celebration of friends lost too early.
Becoming who I am (2024) by Silen Wellington, composer & Ashton Mach, storyteller
Performed by:
Ashton Mach, Viola
Ryan Fiegl, electronics
Storyteller notes:
For much of my life, I always felt like things were a little bit “off.” I could just never seem to fit in and I didn’t know why. That all changed on September 3rd, 2021 - the day I discovered she/they pronouns and gender beyond the binary. My life of incomprehensible insecurities went from a tangled mess to a crystal-clear picture, and for once I was able to see myself for who I really was.
“Becoming Who I Am” is an ode to my gender-identity journey, chronicling the process, hardships, and triumphs of self-discovery. This road is not easy, as you will learn from the piece. But it is also so positively life-changing, and I would not trade these experiences for anything. Despite the fear-mongering propaganda from news media outlets, and despite the transphobia that is so pervasive in American society, I am proud of who I am and who I am becoming.
Composer notes:
The music of "Becoming Who I Am" starts with soundscapes emulating Ashton's childhood, using a mixture of children's voices, the ever-present Suzuki methods of Ashton's childhood home, and Catholic mass music. The viola starts with childlike whimsy before hurrying to mimic the boxed scales and rudiments of trying to conform to binary gender norms. This transforms throughout puberty, introducing friction with these norms until finally breaking free into authenticity.
i, they (2024) by Alexa Letourneau, composer and Viet Nguyen, storyteller
Performed by:
Sonya Yeager-Meeks, Flute
Deborah Marshall, Clarinet
Ashton Mach, Viola
David Short, Cello
Leah Podzimek, Soprano
Ryan Fiegl, Electronics
I. Freedom and Space
II. I Stood Up
III. Constantly Becoming
Lyrics:
Freedom and space.
I stood up
Only them, not you.
I stood up
Dyke bitch!
I stood up
Outside some guy
There’s laughter in the streets.
Sounds of joy,
flags in the wind,
music in the open air.
After decades of hate, we thrive.
After decades of fear, we’re alive.
No one can ignore my joy
it is, just like me,
constantly becoming.
Composer notes:
"i, they" is a piece that explores identity in several different interpersonal ways. In listening to the recorded interview with Viet Nguyen, I felt a deep sense of connection to their lived experience; not only do the two of us share many of our identity labels, including nonbinary, asexual, and not-totally-sure-romantically-but-i-have-a-wonderful-partner, but the way that Viet views themself really resonated with me and my own story of becoming myself. The title contains a double meaning. As the central identity explored in the piece is nonbinary, "i, they" references understanding one's own internal gender and using they/them pronouns. However, "i, they" can also be understood as outlining a dichotomy between the self and others, as personal identity is so often entangled with the people in our lives. Whether they influence us positively in our journeys of self discovery or react in inflammatory and negative ways, none of us know ourselves in a vacuum, but damn it, we're trying to.
Composer Bios
Spencer Evans
Spencer Evans is a contemporary classical composer who utilizes collaboration to create a more accessible environment for marginalized peoples. After beginning classical piano training at a young age, they eventually grew tired of performing other people's works and began writing their own.
Spencer's music ranges from neoclassical to more exploratory pieces involving microtonality and extended technique for solo instruments. While they have found success in writing concert music, they believe their writing style and aspirations lend themselves best to films or performance art spaces. Their dream career is to be a film composer, and their favorite film scores at the moment are Bobby Krlic’s score for Midsommar (dir. Ari Aster) and Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto’s score for The Revenant (dir. Alejandro G. Iñárritu).
A student at the University of Denver, Spencer is currently working towards a Bachelor of Music in Composition.
A champion of social justice, Spencer fuels their emotions around topics such as Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ rights into their works. In the future, they hope to create musical programs that exclusively showcase LGBTQ performers and performers of color. Spencer also believes in creating a more accessible environment for new music and hopes to create programs that include people from all walks of life whether they come from a musical background or not. Spencer's music has been performed by The Mivos Quartet, Trio Immersio, The Estrella Consort, The Julius Quartet, and various performers at the Lamont School of Music in Denver, Colorado. Programs they have attended include the ICEBERG Institute (Vienna, Austria), Valencia International Performance Academy (Valencia, Spain),Alba Music Festival (Alba, Italy), and the Screen Music Festival (Milan, Italy).
Alexa Letourneau
New York based creative Alexa Letourneau (any pronouns) is a composer, flutist, singer, researcher, and educator. An Ohio native, Alexa began playing the flute at eight years old. Within weeks, they were taping 5 pens together to draw a staff on which to begin composing. Their works are focused upon an exploration of shared human identity through sonic journeys. This is a fancy way of saying that they write from a place of vulnerability as a way of communicating love. They are a firm believer that no matter what piece you write, someone in the audience absolutely needs to hear it.
Recent works have centered on Alexa's queerness and neurodivergence. These include: Eight Songs for a Drag King, a chamber opera exploring gender through the experiences of eight AFAB nonbinary poets; The Things I Want to Tell You, a vocal chamber work meditating on identity construction as an autistic person; and something that is very close, a trio piece about finding belonging in the queer community as an asexual/aromantic spectrum person.
In addition to composing as a solo pursuit, Alexa is a founding member of Mosaic Composers Collective, the director of Unjust Intonation a cappella, creator of the podcast Classical Schmassical: the anti-Classical classical music podcast, member of C4: the Choral Composer Conductor Collective, and one half of the flexible instrumentation group Aglet Ensemble.
Florence Anna Maunders
Newbury-based Florence Anna Maunders is a multi-international award-winning composer, performer, conductor & educator. She studied at the RNCM in Manchester, before taking a long break from writing music, instead focusing on teaching, performing and electronic music production. In 2018 she made a dramatic return to composition, completed a masters degree in Birmingham and is currently working on a PhD as a doctoral fellow at Cardiff. Since returning to writing music, she's enjoyed significant successes in the UK, the USA, Europe and across the rest of the world, leading to a string of high profile awards & prizes including the Royal Philharmonic Prize. Recent highlights include commissions, collaborations and performances with internationally renowned ensembles such as the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Third Coast Percussion, London Chamber Orchestra, Psappha, Black Pencil Ensemble, Rarescale, Strange Trace Opera, the Villiers Quartet, Fulham Brass Band, Wigmore Hall and Kyan Quartet as well as leading soloists and other opportunities. Florence also writes extensively for film and media, enjoying ongoing collaborations with directors on both sides of the Atlantic. Her music is wild, rhythmical and exciting, filled with "energised, rough-edged juxtapositions" - “a crescendo of outright queer orchestration” - and reveals a wide range of influences from electronic dance music, contemporary jazz, Middle Eastern traditional music, and the music of Stravinsky & Messiaen. She always aims to write music which makes the listener move - perhaps even to dance!
Rain Michael
Rain (they/them) is a multi-instrumentalist and composer with a BMus in composition, BA in psychology, minors in linguistics and leadership, and a certificate in cognitive science at CU Boulder, all of which influence both their compositions and interest in the subjective experiences involved in music performance and perception. From Pierrot ensemble to spatial open instrumentation, Rain’s music has been performed by the Colorado Wind Ensemble as well as HOCKET, ~Nois, Duo Cortona, and others at CU Boulder’s College of Music SoundWorks New Music concerts and has been featured on the KGNU Present Edge radio program. Their piece seeds to plant (in an unmarked grave) was selected for performance in the 2023 Nief-Norf International Call-For-Scores. Rain has also collaborated with filmmakers and audiovisual artists in creating multimedia projects.
Rain’s current musical focuses primarily surround aleatoric and graphic notations alongside asking (and sometimes answering) questions about music such as “How do I make a single note groove?” (with saxophones!) and “How many keyboards can I fit on a stage?” (at least 10). Outside of music, they are also currently working as a Registered Behavior Technician and enjoy playing card games, hanging out with friends, and collecting stickers.
Silen Wellington
Silen Wellington (they/he) is a sculptor of sound, artist of people, storyteller, witch, genderqueer shapeshifter, mercurial name collector, and lover, among other things. Avidly interdisciplinary, they like to combine music with other art mediums, be that spoken word, visual art, ritual performance, loud and fiery eye contact, otherworldly and melting trysts, or something else entirely. They were a 2022-2023 American Opera Initiative composer with Washington National Opera for a production at the Kennedy Center, a 2022 Bouman Fellow with the composer collective Kinds of Kings and a 2019 SEAMUS Allen Strange Award recipient. Internationally performed from Hyderabad, India to Invercargill, Aotearoa New Zealand, their work has won competitions & commissions from ensembles such as Ars Nova Singers, Denver’s Playground Ensemble, Resonance Women’s Chorus, and Phoenix: Colorado’s Transgender Community Choir. They have participated in residencies and festivals such as Virginia Center for the Creative Arts & Connecticut Summerfest. Besides writing music, they enjoy writing poetry, harvesting stories, unhinged-unfettered-unapologetic dance, and falling in love.